Inadvertent love
by Critical K.O
Summary: K.O. finds himself in a strange position when he starts to get suspicious that perhaps Shannon might have feelings for him, what will happen when he tries to understand it more? How will his friends react? How will this go for the two? Reviews appreciated. STORY COMPLETED.
1. A Talk

**Hey all, Charlie here. I Just am making this authors note to introduce myself, I'm new to writing and have even less experience at it than I have at deep sea scuba diving. But yeah this is my first attempt at a story and I hope you tell me what ya think. Thanks, take care. This was deleted for a short while to have minor touch ups, so please leave me your thoughts.**

* * *

"Man… today's been exhausting. Eight attacks by Boxmore in one day. Wonder what was up with them?" K.O. pondered aloud. He'd been a hero for most of his short life, though now ever since he started working at Lakewood Plaza Turbo, his strength had grown faster than ever. "I hope we'll be fine tomorrow while Enid's off…" he then murmured. One of his best friends and co-worker, Enid, sometimes had to take personal days off when her stress started to get pushed past its limit. Their boss found that option a lot better than having customers complain about having their souls stolen again.

The young hero now wanted to focus on getting home. Normally he rode back with his beloved mother, but being stuck on a later shift than usual due to Boxmore's decision to attack repeatedly today made him have to take the long way home, through the early night, while a gibbous moon hung in the sky.

* * *

" _Moooom!_ I'm home!" K.O. entered through the front door, relieved to be home after the long day. He hoped it meant tomorrow would be a little easier.

"Hey there, peanut! Dinner's about ready. Just give it a few more minutes in the oven," his mother, Carol, called out. She taught karate at the fitness dojo in Lakewood Plaza Turbo next to where her son worked.

"Alright, mommy! I'm gonna go put my stuff up!" K.O. called out as he took his vest off. He rested it on the couch arm rest beside his strong mother before going down to his room to put his backpack away.

Carol was glad to see her beloved son alright, considering before she left to go home, he looked more exhausted than before.

The young woman heard the ding of the timer. She stood up to grab her son's vest planning to wash it for him. However her eye was caught by something on it. It was a thin single strand of light pink hair on the fabric of her son's. She picked it up, her eyebrow quirked. "It looks like a girl's _…hair…?_ " she had a realization hit her that made her smile. He was about to become a teenager. It seemed just about the right time to talk to him about her realization. She went to get dinner set up.

* * *

Once K.O. finished putting his various items away, he took his seat at the kitchen table with a bright smile on his face, more than ready to fill up his stomach.

"So Boxmore attacked the plaza eight times today? Large scale assaults or just small stuff?" Carol questioned, taking her seat across from her son.

"Well, their first attack was just them trying to surprise us with disguises to get ahold of that new product Mister Gar put on sale," K.O. felt bad for not being able to see past those obvious disguises of the Boxmore bots. He was not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, Enid had wound up burning their disguises off too. "Then they stopped trying to be sneaky and just went all out. After that their attacks were just the same regular ones," K.O. mused. Each attack was more exhausting than the last. They just assumed Boxmore was trying to tire them out with an endless barrage of bot armies, but that plan made no sense, even for Boxman.

"Well you did pretty well today holding them off like you three did," his mother said with a proud smile on her face, happy to see him growing so strong. There was a bit of an awkward silence from there on for the dinner, until she decided now was the time to question him. "Hey, peanut… Can I ask you something?"

" _Mmh…?_ " K.O. nodded with his mouth full of another bite of food.

"Do you have a special girl in your life?" she so asked, right then and there. Her son swallowed his food before he answered.

"Yeah! I've got you, Enid, Dendy, a lot of people in the plaza." K.O.'s answer made his mother chuckle. She reached over and rubbed his head, messing up his brush-like hair.

"No, not that kind of special… I mean someone you're really close with… in a more… romantic way… like a girlfriend?" Carol continued. K.O. quirked an eyebrow, not understanding what she meant. Half of his friends were female.

"I dunno," he blurted out, still confused. That was his usual self with some of the conversations he had, normally K.O. was more optimistic and cheery, but his energy was real low right now so keeping up was a bit hard. Especially when it came to a topic he barely understood.

"I'm asking because I found a hair on your vest. A pink one. But I don't think I know of any friends of yours that have pink hair," Carol claimed. The only way that hair could have gotten there was if someone was resting their head on his chest. That was what made her assume he had started a romantic relationship with someone new in his life.

"Pink hair? Oh! _That's…_ " K.O. knew what that was from, but before he could talk, his mother interrupted.

"Hey hey, I'm just busting your chops, kiddo. If you ever need any advice though, don't hesitate to ask me or your friends," Carol assured. K.O. wondered what she meant by advice. The pink hair was from Shannon, a Boxmore bot, whose disguise consisted of a poorly fashioned pink wig and terrible looking clothing.

"Advice to help me with… girls?" K.O. didn't understand. Carol got up to put the dirty dishes into the sink.

"Yeah! I know romance is a really confusing thing at your age, but that's why I wanna help," Carol stated, hoping her son would at least consider asking his friends for advice, if he felt uncomfortable discussing it with her directly.

"Well… _uh…_ " K.O. murmured rubbing his head wondering if his was something important he would need in the hero life he aspired for. He went over to her, hopping up onto a stool beside the sink to help her clean the dishes. "Is romance something you need to be a hero, mom?"

"Haha… yeah. It helps a lot in some areas, but it's kind of more personal with its use," Carol nodded, though she did not want to go into detail on how exactly romance could be helpful on missions. "How close are you and this girl?" she handed him another plate, the young hero wiped it down with a dish towel while trying to think.

" _Uh…_ I don't know…" K.O. shrugged. He was not sure who his mother was referring to specifically. If she was still talking about the hair she found on his vest, then he really had no idea how to respond to inquiries like this about Shannon.

"How'd you meet them? Was it through school?" Carol tried to continue the talk. It was embarrassing for her son, and she got that, but she knew it was better for him to have some advice than be left on his own on this matter, she was oblivious to the fact that she was entirely misunderstanding a lot of this.

"She tried to cut me to pieces when we first met… and every time after that, she's the one that keeps messing up my hair." K.O. explained, now just assuming this was a talk about Shannon specifically for some reason that he had trouble grasping.

"That explains why you've gotten so much better at dodging at least," Carol patted his back, "Well don't worry. Usually when a girl's giving you a hard time, it means they have feelings for you," those words bounced around in K.O.'s head a minute before it seemed to fully register.

"It's… Really?" K.O. had to ask in disbelief. His mother nodded.

"Oh yeah. It's not a good way to do it, but everyone shows their feelings in their own ways," Carol reassured, glad her son was at least listening to her advice, instead of shying away like she expected.

"But mom, what should I do then?" the level 3 hero requested. Now his brain felt like it had lost part of its reasoning with this revelation.

"I can't tell ya that, honey. That's gonna be up to you. But if you really need more advice, try asking your friends. I'm sure they'll know," the owner of the fitness dojo wished she could help more, but it was up to her son to handle it from this point on. The brush haired boy hugged his mother's waist.

"Thanks, mommy! I'm sure this'll help me on my path to becoming a hero!" K.O. exclaimed warmly, though still trying to absorb the information with the revelations in it.

"It's nothing peanut. Why don't you run along now? I can handle the rest of the cleanup," Carol suggested. K.O. nodded, hopping off the stool and going to his room. It was only late into the afternoon, but to him the day felt like it had been going on forever.

* * *

K.O. took a seat on his bed, lost in his thoughts to a degree, but mainly wanting to rest. He laid down, resting his head on the pillow. His whole body felt relieved at just having the ability to recover its stamina for a change.

He heard his phone suddenly start ringing with a more upbeat ring tone. The level 3 hero opened his cellphone to answer it.

"Enid! Hey, is everything okay?" K.O. greeted one of his best friends, hoping she had at least took some stress off of her since he last saw her twisting off a robot's arm.

"Fine as it can be… I wanted to check up on you since you nearly fainted on us twice today," the level 4 ninja stated. She laid outside her home under a tree, trying to enjoy the night while bathing under the ever raising moonlight.

"I'm fine now that I got to eat… Just really sore from all the bruises," K.O. stated. He felt better already just from being able to lay down. "You change your mind about coming to work tomorrow?"

"Aaha…! You know how hard it is to get a day off? I'd be crazy to ignore one given to me for free," Enid exclaimed. She sounded happy and recovering after the stressful day. Her legs were killing her. The young boy understood that. Their boss could be scary at times.

"Enid, can I ask you something?" the level 3 aspiring hero hesitated, still somewhat dwelling on his conversation with his mother earlier. Initially he wanted to ignore it, but her advice was still weighting on his mind the more he thought on it.

"Sure. Sup?" Enid insisted. She had told him he could ask her anything several times when they became worried about him.

"Have you… Ever seen someone be mean to someone they like? A lot more than like I mean…" K.O. tried to be completely direct with his query. There was an awkward silence for a minute as his friend processed the question.

"Yeah. Some people do it because they don't know how to show their feelings to the other person…" the purple haired cashier answered, trying not to mention her childhood friend that came to mind like a bad emotional bruise.

"And… what would you do if someone was like that with you?"

Another short moment of silence took place before Enid answered. "K.O., the best I can tell you is to just do what you feel is right, because, well… you're you." she was just surprised to imagine he was in one of these situations, but she felt relieved knowing he was talking to her instead of their other friend about it. Like Rad would be able to give subtle advice.

"Thanks, Enid… I appreciate the help," K.O. thanked her, though he felt a little left out on advice there.

"No problem. I'll see you guys Wednesday," Enid wished him good luck before hanging up. The young hero put his cellphone aside before laying back in his bed, even more lost in his thoughts than before.

"A girl being mean like that means they might like me, so that means...? Shannon might like me?" He murmured to himself, unsure about a lot of it. Was it even possible? If so he was scared confused and very uncertain on what to do. That was when he decided, that he would ask his boss and other co-worker tomorrow for their advice.


	2. Advise

After that strange night that was yesterday at home, K.O. was trying to go about his day like normal, even if his head was constantly being weighted down with various thoughts. He entered the Lakewood Plaza Turbo for his average day routine, stepping inside Gar's Bodega. The hero supply store was as it was, stocked for anything a hero might need whenever it was ready.

" **K.O.!** " a voice, manly beyond belief, made K.O. stand firm. Mr. Gar, the boss of him and his friends, stood there, wearing just pants, a tie around his neck and glasses on his face. His mustache practically looked as strong as he did.

"Yes sir, Mr. Gar!" K.O. stood straight, saluting to the Level 11 hero he idolized.

"You can relax, K.O., this isn't the military," Mr. Gar stated. Even after how long he had little K.O. employed here, the owner of the bodega still could never get used to that kid idolizing him, or at least how openly he did it. "I have a temporary reassignment for you today."

This already made the young fighter more than ecstatic already. "I'm ready for anything, sir!" K.O. eagerly cried. He was usually just in charge of cleaning up the bodega.

"Since Enid is taking a personal day off, I need you to take over in her place at the register," Mr. Gar ordered.

"I won't let you down, sir!" K.O. nodded his brush-haired head back and forth. Without any reluctance, he hopped over to behind the counter. He had to stand on the chair Enid normally laid back on to relax. He needed it just so he could be seen over the counter.

"Great! Good luck with the customers, K.O.," Mr. Gar said. However, before he could make leave to his office, the Level 3 hero had last night's thoughts cross his mind yet again. It was hard to keep them away. His mother did suggest asking his friends if he needed to, and he saw his boss as a friend.

"Mr. Gar, can I… ask you something?" K.O. requested, though was nervous.

"What is it, K.O.?" Mr. Gar requested. He had a lot to do himself before the day even really got started.

"You have a crush on my mom, right?" K.O. began. It had been more than obvious of his boss's infatuation with Carol, but bringing it up had a bit of a special effect on the middle aged man.

" _I-I_ You… _Y-_ yes K.O. _I-I-_ I do… Why do yo-you ask?" Mr. Gar was able to keep himself together, despite his face heavily blushing red.

"What would you do if someone liked you but you weren't sure about it?" K.O. asked, innocent enough as he could put it. His boss's face tinted even redder at the mere thought that Carol might possibly be returning his feelings.

"I have important work to do! **_Dismissed!_** " Mr. Gar stomped the ground, cracking the floor open. He jumped down into it before pulling it closed behind him like he wanted an emergency escape route to his office.

" _Well…_ maybe he'll have an answer later?" K.O. rubbed his head, more confused than he was before about it. He hoped that his boss just needed time to come up with the answer.

* * *

For the next couple of hours, K.O. worked the register and put up with the customers, that normally made Enid lose her patience. His cute charm and appeal tended to make them hold up the line trying to talk so much, so Mr. Gar had to use the springboard under the floor in front of the register to throw out the stallers, as the boss called them.

"Break time!" K.O. hummed before hopping over the counter and making his way to the break room. he was happy with how today was going, though when not dealing with customers, he did spend most of his time thinking about all he talked about with his mother last night.

K.O. sauntered over to the break room, sat on one of the chairs and took out a sandwich. _"Man… what should I do about Shannon…?"_ he pondered to himself, staring downward at his food.

"Hey little buddy!" K.O. suddenly heard a familiar voice from nowhere that startled him suddenly. The young boy looked over his shoulder. "Whoa, you okay? Looked like you almost had a heart attack there," Radicles, the stockroom worker, questioned. The Level 3 alien was one of K.O.'s closer friends in the plaza, and his psychic powers made him perfect for his position in the bodega.

" _Ye-_ yeah, sorry… just distracted," the brush haired boy responded, trying to relax while his green alien friend took the seat across from him at the table with his own lunch.

There was an awkward silence between them both K.O. did initially want to get Rad's input on his situation, but he recalled the green alien's past experience with Shannon and how they were in a very brief relationship, which got interrupted by Boxmore's other robotic children and outright destroyed.

"So what's bugging you, K.O.?" Rad suddenly broke the silence, more than able to tell something was on his best bud's mind. The Level 3 alien took a bite out of his food as he waited. There was not much else to do today as he could discern.

" _It's…_ Is it normal for a girl to show she likes you by being rough with you?" K.O. blurted his question out. Rad kept declaring himself a chick magnet. K.O. did not understand it entirely, but figured he would be able to help the most if it were true.

"Are you kidding? Have you seen how many times Enid's throw kunai at me?" Rad laughed hard in reply. Though his laughter stopped when he saw a sad face on K.O. Desperation for some honest advice was written all over his face.

" _Yeah!_ K.O., a lot of girls do that. Usually they aren't that intense about it though," Radicles answered, going from mainly personal experience. The girls that showed interest in him were never that type and weren't too cruel about expressing their affection. "How hard of a time has this girl been giving you?" the Level 3 stockroom worker asked, though he could not think of who his short friend could be referring to.

"She tries to cut me in half a lot… she usually cuts my hair on purpose too, and insults me a lot," K.O. explained. His friend paused for a brief second to ponder about it. No one matching that description that he knew came to mind.

"Well, they, _uh…_ sure sound like the type to show their affection through being tough on you," Rad responded. His Level 3 friend held his head in uncertainty, feeling steadily stressed out by this answer.

Rad remained silent from there on, guessing that K.O. was just having relationship issues more than anything now.

K.O. took a bite out of his food while his best friend attended to his own food. Shannon was trying to show him she liked him for a long time? Was that a possibility? "Rad, there's something else I wanna know…" K.O. breathed. Radicles nodded, his mouth full of his lunch. "What was it like when you were with Shannon?" K.O. did not mean to open old wounds, but he was too curious for it, especially if he planned on at least looking into it slightly more.

" _ **When I was what-?!**_ " Rad wound up choking on his food for a moment. There was an even longer pause. His last relationship with her, but it was only brief. Very brief, not even half a week in length.

"I wanna know, Rad. You're the only one I know who's dated someone like a villain," K.O. covered his query up with a lie to keep any suspicions off him, equating someone bullying him so badly that it was like they were a villain seemed to do the trick.

" _I-_ I hate to tell you, li'l buddy, but we weren't even together for a week, so we never really got to know," Rad hated those memories. He couldn't get them out of his mind either. They never really got far enough to see how they would have done if the relationship had gone on longer.

" _Oh…_ alright…" K.O. sighed solemnly. He had been hoping for a better answer.

"K.O., why don't you go patrol the plaza? I'll handle the register for a bit. Everything's already restocked," Rad insisted that his friend went to try and clear his head. The Level 3 young hero nodded. His lunch was eaten up anyway. He stood up from the table and began to walk away. " _Jeez… I wish Enid was here,_ " Rad muttered feeling bad for not being of anymore help. He went to get to the cash register to deal with any customers that would come.

* * *

K.O. spent a short amount of time wandering the plaza, greeting the variously ranked heroes as he passed them. His kind heart and attitude with wanting to help everybody he could really gained him a positive reputation, even if he was also known for being a bit on the annoying side.

" _Man…_ What should I do? Just try and talk to her about it?" K.O. muttered to himself. He had heavy doubts though that talking with Shannon was even an option, or at least being able to talk to her without getting attacked.

As he walked around the back of the plaza, he heard a clanging noise coming from one of the two dumpsters. The Level 3 hero approached, placing his ear against the dumpster to try and hear inside.

He heard what sounded like a very faulty engine constantly having minor blowback. He raised an eyebrow. He knew where that sound came from. "Again? _Jeez,_ Jethro…" K.O. grabbed the side handle for the dumpster, opening the hatch. A small blue robot with treads and an exhaust pipe on his back rolled out of it.

"I am Jethro," Jethro, one of the Boxmore bots and renowned as the weakest of them all, expressed his gratitude.

"No problem. What are you doing in there? Trying to find Mr. Gar's weakness in the trash again?" K.O. asked, though he guessed he could not judge. He sometimes looked in the trash for POW cards people might have thrown out carelessly.

"I am… Jethro," Jethro answered. He owed K.O. for saving him from waiting to be crushed in a trash compactor until he got reloaded onto another body again.

 _"How'd you even get in there?"_ the barefoot boy mentally pondered. Asking the weakest Boxmore bot this was pointless though. He would get no answer. Jethro was more resourceful than he looked. Jethro started to roll away. "He-hey! Wait!" K.O. ran for him. He grabbed the robot and turned him around to face him. "I wanted to ask you something."

"I am Jethro," the tin can on treads remained stationary.

"Do you… think you can help me talk to Shannon? I want to ask her some things," K.O. requested nervously. As the thought about it, he figured that maybe asking Jethro of all people would not be a bad idea. Their history of passive truces and ignoring one another unless in a fight could help.

K.O. stayed crouched down to Jethro's height. The tread bot let an antenna pop out from his head before beginning to transmit a signal of beeping noises.

"Is that a yes?" the Level 3 hero wondered aloud. He soon heard a long distant whistle, and then a crash that shook the ground beneath them both.

"I am Jethro," Jethro said as they heard a whirring noise. They looked over at the remnants of a destroyed box.

"One of these Lakewood losers are trying to botnap you, Jethro? Well, let me put them in their place!" that familiar voice cackled. K.O. gulped, thinking Jethro set him up on this one inadvertently.

There she was. Shannon, the orange robot girl of the Boxmore family, whose hands retracted with buzz saws in their place and spinning rapidly, like predators ready to go in for the kill.

"Thanks, Jethro…" K.O. held his head. He was not going to get out of this without a fight, at least he could talk while fighting.

"I am Jethro," beeped the robot. K.O. was welcome.


	3. Interest

"Come on Shannon! Calm down, please! _Whoa!_ " K.O. threw himself onto his back to desperately dodge a wide swing, the razor-sharp blade getting part of his brush like hair cut off.

"You tried to kidnap my brother! You expect me to take that sitting down?!" Shannon declared. The distress signal Jethro sent out with that lie of a message alerted her into action.

"I swear I didn't kidnap him! Right, Jethro?!" K.O. looked over to him with a pleading look on his face.

"I. Am. Jethro." Jethro stated apologetically, once she was like this she tended to be unstoppable until eitehr beaten or exhausted..

"Ah, geez!" K.O. rolled backwards into a ball to avoid a buzzsaw that slammed where he laid. It was fast and sharp enough to cut through the concrete, leaving a cut mark after it. He hated that he had to fight when he just wanted to talk already. Though he knew he was expecting too much if he was hoping to meet her without a fight.

K.O. ducked under another horizontal blade swing. He balled his right hand into a knuckle, beginning to create an aura power fist around his arm.

Shannon's next attack was blocked by that power aura, K.O.'s hand shielding him from the attack. Their eyes locked onto one another as they glared intensely. She still could not believe this was the same pipsqueak, that not even two years ago was Level 0 and couldn't even hold his own against anyone other than Jethro.

"Shannon, please! I just want to talk!" K.O. used his other hand to grab her other arm before forcing them to wrap over one another to keep her from attacking him again.

He needed something to calm her down. His brain scrambled for something he could use to ease her mental capacity. He understood why she was mad, after all he'd be just as angry if a villain had kidnapped any of his pals.

"I. Am. Jethro." Jethro suddenly called out to K.O. and the boy felt an idea snap to his head.

"Oh! You were the one behind that disguise plan yesterday?" K.O. chirped the words which seemed to make her pause her efforts at attempting to attack momentarily. Shannon gave him a slight glare.

"Yeah? So? Gonna rub in how bad it went?" Shannon retorted, her voice bitter. The young boy shook his head.

" _N-_ no! It was a good plan and your new outfits for it were even better! Yours was really cute too!" K.O. blurted out. A moment after, he noticed that his last-minute compliment worked. It made the orange Boxmore bot stare at him in awe, wondering if she had heard him right.

" _You…_ you really mean that?" Shannon asked. She had never heard a compliment like that before in her life. The level 3 hero let out a relieved sigh when she pulled back her sawblades and let her normal hands pop back out. Though now it was becoming clear what was going on here now that her mind was no longer blinded in rage.

"What? You had Jethro just lie to call me over so we can talk?" the young girl tilted her head, confused. K.O. looked very sheepish to speak openly. He did not know what to say at this point.

"I. Am. Jethro." Jethro apologized to his sister, feeling bad about the lie, but he knew she would rush over due to the urgency of his signal.

"I just asked him to call you since he owed me one…" K.O. admitted. There was a long awkward pause between the three from there. The young boy pointed a thumb to the upper area of the plaza. "H-how about I buy us food? No one'll bug us up in the food court."

Shannon crossed her arms, but she saw Jethro nod to the offer, so she shrugged. "Fine… but only because I'm in a good mood," Shannon followed K.O. as the three made for the stairs the plaza was having a slow day so there weren't many to take notice of the pair of villains at the moment. K.O. just hoped she stayed in a good mood long enough to talk.

* * *

The three were in an upper food court in the plaza. Anyone in the plaza who saw the three together assumed they were imagining things. There was no way they would see K.O. acting this casual with one of the Boxmore bots, let alone two.

Things were a bit awkwardly quiet between them right now. Jethro's occasional burst of smoke and them eating their lunch provided the sound between them, but none of them said a word.

" _So…_ how have things been?" K.O. broke the silence after a bit more hesitation. He watched Shannon as she paused with another random assortment of metallic tiny items before beginning to crunch and swallow them.

"Why are you suddenly interested?" she raised an eyebrow, finding this all too strange. She wondered if the young boy wanted to make an allegiance for a plan that he needed help with executing, it wouldn't be the first time that was for sure.

"Just trying to be nice," K.O. responded. As nervous as he was getting, he was trying his best to build up courage for the question that had been plaguing his mind since last night.

"I. Am. Jethro.," Jethro said. Things had been quite boring lately. Though Shannon's depressed aura about her showed that things were a bit worse for her than they were for him.

"They've been great… Raymond and Darrell got upgrades, so they're really happy about it…" Shannon stated, but sounded rather bitterly jealous of her brother's upgrades. Even Jethro looked slightly annoyed at the mere mention of it.

"That's great! Does that mean you're gonna be upgraded next?" K.O. asked. The idea of his robotic rivals getting stronger made him eager to fight them again. Maybe he could get stronger himself from it even.

" _No…_ Daddy says we're just perfect as we are…" Shannon let out a long and winded sigh at speaking of the most obvious lie K.O. had ever heard in his entire life.

"I. Am. Jethro.," Jethro explained.

"Wait… he doesn't think you guys have earned any upgrades?" the brush haired boy did not want to sound rude, but Jethro was at least certainly in dire need of it.

"Lately, Darrell and Raymond have been coming out more on top in their plans, so… we've kind of just become the worthless pair of backup failures now," Shannon confessed. She was the least selling of all the Boxmore bots, and that hurt her the most. Even Jethro models sold more than her, even if they were just good target practice dummies.

"Hey, you guys aren't failures," K.O. tried to reassure, "You came up with that plan the other day to disguise like you did."

"You forget the part where it failed?" the orange robotic girl retorted, her head rested on her arms on the table. The level 3 hero found himself pausing awkwardly now. He couldn't continue with that topic if it made her feel even worse. "What is it you wanted to talk to me about anyway?" Shannon asked, now in a bad mood and wanting him to get to the point so she could go home and wallow in her self pity.

" _Well…_ You've been focusing on me a lot more in our fights lately. I wanted to ask if… If you were trying to tell me something?" K.O. tried to beat around the bush. Being direct about it was making him afraid he'd be attacked again.

"I. Am. Jethro." Jethro agreed that this was something he had noticed as well, but the short robot presumed it was his imagination circuit overacting again.

"I'm the one best suited to fight you, according to daddy," Shannon simply responded. She remembered when K.O. made his debut. He was so weak that anyone could just swat him away like a fly. But now he was strong enough to do serious damage. She sometimes found it hard to believe he grew in strength this fast, she was unsure why it impressed her though. "Why? What's it to you?" she then asked.

K.O. figured now he could just throw his response out there safely. Now he could finally get it out of his mind after thinking about it all day .

" _I…_ I figured you might like me?" K.O. admitted. There was a long awkward pause from there as she processed what he said.

"That's… nuts! Why would I like you?! You're one of my enemies and no matter how cute you are, nothing will change that," Shannon had to hold herself back from exploding. She crossed her arms, casting her gaze to the side.

"You think I'm cute?" K.O. squeaked. It was not unusual to hear someone call him that, but to hear it from a rival who tried to murder him on a daily basis was different.

Shannon grew a faint blush on her cheeks, when realizing what she had said aloud. "I-I was trying to just be nice to you for saying my new disguise was cute earlier…" she replied, though she did ponder if he was interested in her now. Though in which case, she was lost entirely on what to do. She never had a human grow affectionate for her before, Raymond had it happen a few times sure, but this was a new experience entirely to her memory.

"I. Am. Jethro.," Jethro said. A sudden buzzsaw was thrown at him, which cut the short blue robot in half easily like a loaf of bread. His two halves hit to the floor, bleeding out nuts and bolts that clattered everywhere.

"Don't even joke about that!" Shannon shouted, her buzzsaws swirling viciously again and her sharp teeth showing. K.O. gulped, but he could not deny that Jethro deserved that one.

 _"She's acting like Mr. Gar does when he's nervous…"_ the young boy thought, though with far less restraint. He figured maybe this was a sign of some sort of emotion. What emotion that was, though, was his issue. K.O. had always been bad at reading people's thoughts.

Shannon pulled back her saws after a second. She was ready to leave, but before she could, she felt K.O. grab her by the wrist.

"What is it now? Don't tell me you want to try and fight…" Shannon huffed, no longer up to fighting for the moment. She knew K.O. would only be doing it to try and cheer her up as well. Maybe even feign losing.

"He-here, this is for taking the time to talk with me," the young boy held up a small napkin with writing on it. She took it with a raised eyebrow.

"I.O.U. Shannon any favor, from K.O…?" Shannon read the note. It even had a small, adorable yet poor drawing of K.O. giving a thumbs up. " _Uhh…_ Thanks…?" the orange robot guessed this was just him trying to be nice. She began to walk away. It was hard to be mad at someone who was not trying to fight her and was in fact the most optimistic adorable character she knew.

* * *

Shannon walked along on her own back to Boxmore, the sun dangling overhead in the afternoon. She looked down at the I.O.U. in her hand. She wanted to throw it away and pretend it didn't exist, but she couldn't for some unknown reason in the back of her head.

"What was that all about, anyway? And why'd Jethro say all that stuff…?" Shannon mumbled. It felt strange. A sudden thought crossed her mind, which stopped her from entering the place she called home. " _Wait…_ asking if I'm interested in him and acting so shy like that…" the orange bot held her head. She had the idea now. "He really is interested in me… a hero is interested in me…" she was unsure how to feel about this. She had a weird sense of mixed dread and irritation, but also a hint of pure joy in her. It all utterly confused her. She'd need a long while to figure out what she could do about it.

 _ **"Why is part of me happy about that though...?"**_


	4. Bodega Brawl

A day had passed since that encounter between the hero and villain. Shannon spent the last day pondering to herself. Everything it was far too much to take in at once.

 _"Oh, boy… How hard is it to tell someone you don't care about them?"_ Shannon wondered to herself what to do. As circuit warming as it was to believe that K.O. was interested in her as more than just a simple enemy, something about it made her ashamed and wondering how this happened. Did this really happen because of Boxman commanding her to focus on battling him? She really could not believe things were that simple. Sadly, it seemed to be just that.

"Shannon? You okay?" a whinier voice chimed up, startling Shannon, until she realized it was just her brother Darrell standing there.

" _Not really…_ " Shannon frowned, turning her gaze away from him. She was still bitter that he got to be upgraded, while she was left with nothing.

"Aw, come on. It's not like we asked Dad for the upgrades ourselves," Darrell presumed this was his sister simply being upset over that. Some days she would be fine, other days her emotional circuit would be malfunctioning.

"Oh, shut up! You already had plenty of different editions, and Raymond was already strong enough without them," Shannon turned around to leave the room, but her brother stopped her.

"I'm sorry again. How about we go beat up those Lakewood losers? That'll cheer you up," Darrell suggested, though all he got in response was a sharp buzzsaw piercing him from front to back.

"I'm not in the mood, now leave me alone!" Shannon kicked him back, causing the busted bot to collapse into the floor, bleeding oil. Shannon stormed off shortly after.

"Aw, man… I just finished polishing too," Darrell whined, knowing he had to get another body again.

* * *

Shannon just wandered through Boxmore HQ. It was both the Boxmore family's home and factory at once. The orange bot did not have many ideas on what to do with K.O.

 _"Why is it I'm only now having problems screaming something at someone?"_ Shannon asked herself, finding it strange. She made her way to the break room that normally housed many bots during lunch breaks, but at this time, she knew only one person would be in there. Shannon opened the door to see a familiar sports machine in front of the open refrigerator. "Raymond!" she called to that person in question.

Raymond, the youngest and prettiest as well as the most egotistical of the Boxmore family, snapped his head towards her. "This isn't what it looks like!" he naturally assumed she was mad at him for stealing food again. It was a bad habit he had gotten after tasting the delicious food of one of their simple janitor bots.

"Yeah, yeah, I don't care about your food. I need to talk to you. I… I need your advice," Shannon forced the words past her lips, despite how much she hated to confess them. Her younger brother was the only one who ever had been in a situation like this.

"Oh… Sure! Anything for you, Shannon," Raymond hummed, almost egotistically when hearing her announce her request. He took his seat at one of the few tables in the room.

Shannon sat across from him. "You've dated humans, right?"

Her brother shrugged. "I've spent some time with a lot of my admirers, but never a real relationship. Why'd you ask?" Raymond responded, confuse. His charm had an effect on people. He had indulged some of his fans, but so far nothing serious to a degree.

" _I…_ " the orange Boxmore bot felt her confidence in her voice fade. Her brother's upgraded armor reminded of her self perceived worthlessness. It unnerved her.

"Come on, I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong," Raymond reminded her, not wanting to have her pent up her emotions and worries. She was awful at dealing with them by herself, everybody knew that about her.

"I know, I know. I just… Still can't believe it's real," Shannon shook her head before resting her face in the palms of her hands, as if hoping to wake up from a dream. She looked up to her younger brother after a moment. "I think a human's in love with me," she said it as straight forward as she put it. Raymond stared at her, unsure what to really say in response to that. He knew Shannon had no memory of her relationship with Rad, but still it worried him to have a similar situation emerge.

"In love? Like they've said it to you and everything?" the sports loving robot requested clarification. He certainly understood why she was upset about this. It was her first time with this problem after all.

"No, they haven't, exactly… said it, but they've been acting all weird around me and asked if I was interested in them," Shannon explained. That seemed to be enough to her brother to agree and nod at the claim of assumed love.

"So, what'll you do?" Raymond inquired, holding his chin.

"I was hoping you could tell me how to handle this," Shannon said. Her brother chuckled.

"Sorry. I've had many humans in love with me before, but I've never had any with courage to attempt much with me," he responded. He could tell that his older sister did have feelings for this person, just by how she behaved when discussing them. "Either tell them you have no feelings for them or indulge them a little and see how it goes. Just make sure dad doesn't find out," Raymond insisted to Shannon. After he said that, he heard a loud ring. It was break time. "I'll check on you later," Raymond left on that note. It wouldn't be long until the break room got full of their worker bots.

" _Indulge them…?_ " Shannon held her head, shaking it slightly at the suggestion. Yet, for some reason, part of her was telling her to do it.

* * *

Activity at the plaza had been rather slow today. Not that it did much to dampen K.O.'s upbeat mindset. Enid was sleeping behind the front counter, while Rad was restocking the healing potions.

"Wonder why people have been buying so many of those lately," K.O. mentally pondered, guessing it was just something in his imagination.

Suddenly they heard the sound of an alarm blaring. Their attention was grabbed instantly.

"Boxmore took a lot longer to attack today," Rad stood up.

"Was starting to think I'd get no exercise," Enid stretched. K.O. felt anxious. Shannon was very likely to be in the assault crate that had landed here. The Level 3 hero hoped this would be easy.

* * *

As they stepped outside, they saw the usual large Boxmore box in the parking lot that had cracked the area around where it landed. Shortly after, the box's sides popped off, revealing Raymond, Shannon and Darrell.

"Wow. You Lakewood losers showed up before we could even fire an attack this time," Darrell commented. He had a bad feeling about this fight, even with the upgrades him and his younger brother had.

"What can we say?" Enid cracked her knuckles, "We wanted to make sure you got home as fast as you got here."

K.O. and Shannon were both in a semi locked gaze. Their eyes refused to break the awkward lock they exchanged. _"She wants to talk to me… But how can we do that in a battle?"_ the Level 3 hero pondered. It was obvious that Shannon was not here with the primary objective to fight.

"Let's begin, shall we?" Raymond made a baseball pop out of his palm and onto his hand. He threw it at them like a stone to a bird. The three bodega employees dodged swiftly, and the baseball exploded upon hitting the ground, leaving a small crater after it.

The Boxmore trio scattered at the same time to keep up with their personal targets that their father insisted they were best suited to fighting against.

"Hold still!" Darrell fired his blaster of green plasma. Rad ran like the wind, dodging the several shots, some of which hit the ground and took out chunks of concrete.

"Take this!" Radicles fired his telekinetic beams from both fingers. Darrell stood his ground when the beams hit him, and they bounced off harmlessly. "What the-?!" gawked the alien bodega worker.

"Impressed?" a sneer crept on Darrell's lips as he patted his shiny upgraded body plating,

"Daddy upgraded me and Raymond. Now I have psychic proof armor!" he then blasted Rad right in the chest while he was off guard taking in the surprise, knocking him off his feet and making him slide back a good distance across the pavement.

"Ohhh… I'll feel that one in the morning…" Rad coughed, holding his slightly burnt chest.

"Hang on Rad, I'll- Whoa!" Enid was about to try and help him, only for a hockey puck to zip past her at high speed that she barely avoided in time.

"You better focus up or else you'll lose something," Raymond laughed, firing another hockey puck from his hand and quickly smacking it with his stick.

Enid threw herself backwards onto the ground. Dodging the puck. Quickly rolling backwards to get onto her feet.

"Two can play the long-range game!" Enid lit both of her legs on fire with her powers. She hopped into the air and swung wide, shooting a curved bolt of fire at the sports bot. She threw out four more before landing.

"You'll have to do better than that!" Raymond spun the hockey stick like a tornado, catching each fireball and harmlessly dispersing it to the air, though as he took care of the last fiery projectile, he saw no sign of Enid. The Level 4 hero appeared overhead, dropping down with a flaming axe kick.

The collision made her opponent's metallic armor fold in partially. But other than that, barely a wound. Raymond grinned, grabbing her by the leg with both hands before slamming her on the ground. He then smacked her away with his hockey stick making her skid across the pavement.

Enid coughed as she held her now wounded side. Her opponent suddenly had the force and the speed of a truck. She glared at the sports bot as he stood there proudly. His armor went back to its normal shape from where she hit it.

"Do you like it? My armor was given a nice shock absorbent upgrade! It makes any impact weaken by a large amount," Raymond grinned with pride at his new armor upgrade. Boxman had outdone himself with these.

"Then I'll just have to hit you harder!" Enid got up, ready to keep battling.

While those two handled the others, K.O. was trying to dodge Shannon's razor sharp blades to the best of his ability. He was able to tell for himself that the robot girl was distracted. She was reluctant to fight.

"Shannon, can you at least not cut my hair this time? Please!" K.O. ducked under another high swing, and the opposite of his request, he threw a quick power fist, hitting her on the forehead.

"Grrr… that's it!" Shannon looked furious. She hopped up, and she retracted her feet. Out came two buzzsaws that she balanced on, just like ice skates. The whirled as fast as wheels from a motorcycle.

"Oh no!" K.O. had no time to react before he was tackled by her reckless attack. A cried out as he was smashed through the bodega door, the two going inside.

" _ **K.O.!**_ " Rad and Enid called out. They were about to go help their friend, but they were blocked by Darrell and Raymond.

"Ah, ah, ah… our sister's been a bit stressed out lately, so we'll let her have her fun," Raymond insisted. The four wound up glaring at each other intensely, waiting for one or the other to make the first move.

* * *

K.O. bounced off the metal shutter in the large stock room, at the very back of the bodega. There was fear in his eyes. "Are you angry about yesterday?" the Level 3 hero gulped, closing his eyes and expecting the worst.

"No…" Instead, she helped him back onto his feet. K.O. was confused. "I just needed a way to talk to you alone…" Shannon sighed, now that she had calmed down. She took the hit from him on purpose to appear to explode in a blind rage. They were away from the rest of the battle now.

" _Uh…_ rea-really? About what?" K.O. was surprised, but nodded, glad to avoid fighting her further. Shannon was in that depressing slump deep enough.

"I wanted to ask you to…" Shannon struggled to say the words, but she forced them out of her mouth. "…to come with me to a party… as _**MY**_ date." It was the advice that Raymond had given her that she was following here.


	5. Joy

"You want to go on a date… with _me?_ " K.O. could not believe what he heard. After how their conversation went yesterday, he had assumed the worst.

Shannon dangled the I.O.U. note in front of his face. "Yeah, I do," she nodded, guessing it was a good thing she had gotten that pity favor from him. The Level 3 hero took the note as he just kept staring at her in awe. He was happy, but also partially confused.

"Sure! But _I…_ never really have been to a party with a date before," K.O. stated. He was happy to accept, but he was worried about a lot of things. A party with her friends? What would it be like if they saw a hero and a villain dating? K.O. knew his best friends would be furious if they found that out, but he hated to imagine how her friends would react.

"Well, it's a special party. My oldest friend invited me," Shannon insisted that it was not much of an average celebration. She seemed to not have any of his worries. She was just following her younger brother's advice of indulging these feelings slightly so K.O. would lose all interest, so far though she was failing to see how this was effective.

"Great! When is it?" he asked eagerly, ignoring the sounds of several explosions that rang out from the front of the bodega as the others continued the brawl.

"Tonight. It starts at six," Shannon leaned down and put her hand on his. She let a pen pop out of her pointer finger from her other hand and began to write down the address. K.O. then viewed the address.

"Wow… this is a good ways away," K.O. mumbled. He had gone long distances before, but this destination was longer than he was used to.

"That's a small park, not far from where the party is being held. Meet me there at five," Shannon insisted. K.O. had a dozen questions to ask, but knew now was not the time. The battle was still raging on outside.

"I'll do my best, Shannon," K.O. swore to her. Shannon felt a spark of joy at hearing him agree. K.O. would always help a person, no matter their alignment to good or bad, if they needed it. She shook it off though, not sure what was coming over her with these random sparks of joy. But it really did shine a much needed ray of light on her recently gloomy heart.

" _Ye_ -yeah, thanks… come on, we better get back to the fight," she insisted. The young hero knew they had to keep things secret between them for now.

" **Wait!** " K.O. grabbed her by her wrist.

"What now?" she asked, impatient to get out of this situation before it could become anymore awkward.

"Won't the others get suspicious if we come back without even a scratch?" K.O. chirped. The young girl blinked, guessing he was not as dumb as he appeared. She could not say the same about her family though.

" _Alright…_ guess we really do have to spar a little," Shannon let both buzzsaws come out of her hands. K.O. knew what she had in mind and nodded, getting ready to resume their fight like they hadn't paused for a second. Something inside her though, was telling her to not do this, to not ruin a good moment with an unwanted battle.

* * *

Outside, the battle had been going badly for Rad and Enid. The two kept doing their best, but their strong attributes were actively being countered by the upgrades the two Boxmore bots had gotten.

"Man, if these two are that tough I hate to imagine how bad K.O. has it against Shannon!" Rad coughed, trying to get up, his purple haired friend came over to help.

" _Rad, it's combo time…_ " Enid whispered. They never really needed to combine their attacks until it was for something flashy, normally they did it just to rub salt in the enemies' wounds. Without their young friend, it would be different, but they hoped they would manage.

"Okay," Rad nodded, "We go on three… _One… two… three…!_ "

The two separated. Raymond and Darrell found it funny, as if they saw it as a desperate last-ditch attempt at turning the tables on them.

"Trying to switch enemies, huh? That won't do you much good," Raymond aimed his right arm and started firing baseballs at a high rate like a malfunctioning pitchers machine.

Darrell began firing as well, causing nothing but a ceaseless barrage of plasma shots and baseballs. The two heroes kept countering the attacks while they dodged.

"Rad!" Enid called out, jumping up and doing a quick roundhouse kick, throwing a flaming wave toward Raymond. The young Boxmore bot stood there with a grin, ready to take the hit with his improved armor.

"Heh… gonna try and blast me again? Go ahead!" Darrell sneered. And so Rad fired his psychokinetic beam from his right hand. The beam went past the one-eyed robot and collided with the fire shot wrapping around it. " _ **Eh?!**_ "

"Take this!" Rad yanked hard on the beam with his other hand, his attack ignored Darrell entirely as the flame controlled by the beam flew around the sports loving robot instantly.

Raymond was hit in the back by the psychic controlled fireball. His armor tried to bend to take the impact. However the flames sank around the openings. " _Hot hot hot hot!_ " the sports addicted bot screamed as the fire swirled around his insides rapidly. The overheating overtook him swiftly, as he exploded.

"Oh, jeez. I didn't know he could firebend…!" Darrell took a step back as the two heroes approached him. "Nyeh heh…heh?" the bravado had faded. He was outnumbered. He got one strong kick to the side of his head from Enid, separating it from his body and disabling him instantly.

"Are you okay, Enid?" Rad questioned. Enid held her side in slight pain. Her ribs felt like they had been turned inside out.

"Yeah just some cracked ones. I'll live," the level 4 hero insisted, trying to ignore the pain. The two suddenly remembered their short friend. He was still alone with Shannon, wasn't he? With no time to lose, the other two bodega workers ran into the store to help their friend.

* * *

" _ **K.O.!**_ " Rad and Enid made it to the storage room. They were shocked to see fragments of Shannon everywhere. K.O. stood there, holding the Boxmore bot's dismembered left hand.

"Sheesh, little buddy, did you lose control?" the Level 3 alien hid behind their ninja friend. Enid rolled her eyes. The two went to their young friend. He was scraped and bruised with a good few cuts on his body.

" _Wuh?_ " K.O. snapped out of his spacing out episode upon feeling his friend's touch. They were relieved to see the youngest worker alright.

"What happened here? It looks like you tore her apart," Enid asked. The Level 3 hero looked back down at the robotic hand in his palm. Cold, metallic, yet he felt the desire to keep it close, as if he felt an imaginary warmth.

" _I…_ set off her self-destruct," K.O. claimed, sounding like he was not happy with his victory.

"Well good work, little dude! We handled Raymond and Darrell," Rad cheered. Even after the Boxmore bots got upgraded, they were still able to beat them. It made him enthusiastic to acknowledge this.

"At least we know how to deal with their upgrades now," Enid let out a relieved sigh. Her worries were dispelled. As the two talked, K.O. began to space out again, barely paying attention as he remembered the battle that took place minutes ago.

 _"She wouldn't fight me… so she blew herself up… why?"_ That thought ran on within K.O.'s bandana-clad head for the while. He continued staring at the hand. Eventually, his friends dragged him off to go celebrate their victory for a short while, making him drop the robotic part to the ground.

* * *

The mechanical siblings were back at Boxmore headquarters, already back in new bodies before five minutes even passed. Raymond and Darell were irritated.

"I didn't think they had any tricks left up their sleeves…" Raymond groaned before beginning to sip on his can of oil, feeling foolish for having been beaten by such a simple trick.

"We almost had them that time, too!" Darrell whined, slumping to the floor. Now it was just a matter of time before their father would scold them for their failures, like many other times before.

Shannon didn't bother to say anything. She lay on a nearby chair, staring at the ceiling with her hands resting on her stomach. Her siblings assumed that she was just depressed about losing again, even after separating their enemies. She was so happy that he said yes, that she could barely lay a finger on him. She kept going over it again in her mind.

"Come on, Shannon, cheer up. You were great out there," Darrell insisted, but was cautious to get near his sister out of fear of being sawed in half again.

"You split those three like slices of pizza," Raymond assured to be comforting, "When father gives you your upgrades, you'll be even better."

Shannon turned her head away from them and exhaled. "There is no when for me."

"Now, Shannon…" Darrel tried to reply, when a backfire of a bad motor sounded.

"I am Jethro," Jethro sounded from the now open doorway, idling there.

"I guess dad wants us to come to him this time," Darrell gulped at the words, unsure if that was a bad sign, or a far worse sign than anything, like he was too angry to even leave his office.

"Come on, Shannon. You don't want to make father angrier," Raymond insisted she get up.

"I am Jethro," Jethro interjected. His siblings looked to him in confusion.

" _Daddy only wants to see us…?_ " Darrell grimaced. Raymond was not able to deny it; he was equally scared now. But the two did not argue. They followed Jethro off, leaving Shannon alone with her thoughts. She was worried for her siblings, but she could not muster up the energy to care when her mind was so cluttered.

In the next few minutes as she lay there, processing the same thoughts in and out, the door opened once again. Lord Boxman entered, his presence not being registered by her.

"Shannon," the voice of her father made her sit up and look over to him.

" _Daddy…_ " Shannon was afraid. She instantly realized Jethro had been sent to separate her siblings from her so she could talk with her father privately. "Are you mad at me?" Shannon requested him to be honest straight away. Her father shook his head, reaching up and putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"No, no, no. On the contrary you did wonderful there. Even without upgrades you put everything you had into your task with brilliance," Boxman told her. His only daughter held such skill, even without upgrades. He wished he could say the same for Jethro.

" _Really…?_ " the orange girl was surprised with this praise. After all the heavy scolding for not achieving as much success as Darrell and Raymond.

"Yeah. If you keep this up, you will have earned an upgrade for sure," Boxman insisted. He was more than aware of how hard he had been lately on them. "Let me know if you want anything. I have to go talk to your brothers about their carelessness," he then turned around to leave, now that their talk was done.

"Wait, daddy, I actually do," Shannon stopped him. It gave her the idea to get something from him. "Could I borrow your newest gadget tonight… Please?" she asked politely, while simultaneously putting on her best puppy dog expression.


	6. Preparations

_**Authors note: Hello all, I just wanted to say thank you for your support. I don't plan on this to be a long story, but I'm glad to know that for my first fic attempt I'm doing alright. Enjoy and please, don't hesitate to review.**_

* * *

The day seemed to slow down after that initial attack. K.O. now currently was at home, standing in front of a mirror in his room, trying to finish tying his bowtie on his tuxedo, though he was only wearing the top half of the outfit due to his size issues.

K.O. hoped he was making good time for his first date. He could not believe he was going on one, nor did he think it'd be at a party, let alone with a villain. He was unsure if that was a good thing, though it made him pleased to simply have this chance in his life. He really hoped it would work out. K.O. thought he was good and ready when he heard the sound of a camera snapping.

"You're looking great, peanut!" Carol stated brightly. She was positively aglow tonight, just like her son. The fitness dojo owner could not believe that her son was going on his first ever date tonight, she just wished she could meet the lucky girl.

"Thanks Mommy!" K.O. hugged his mother. She ran her hand through his hair as she stroked his head proudly. "Is there any advice you can give me?" He asked, but his mother shook her head.

"Sorry, kiddo, but you're gonna be on your own for this one. You know this girl better than I do," Carol patted his back. She wanted to know the identity of his bully turned date, as far as she assumed that was who he had asked out.

"Don't worry mom, you'll meet her one day… _I hope,_ " K.O.'s voice trailed off toward the end. Having a relationship with a villain could end badly for both families, he didn't even want to begin imagining it. Still, he was trying not to dwell on it. There was no rule against heroes and villains dating one another. At least there was not a rule like that that he knew about.

K.O.'s eyes suddenly locked to the clock. It read 4:37pm. " **Oh no!** I'm going to be late!" K.O. ran out the door in a hurry as the late afternoon sun dangled brightly in the azure sky.

"Good luck honey!" Carol called out to him while waving. " _Ahh,_ first dates…" she laughed to herself lightly, "It's almost tradition to be late to them," she spoke to nobody in particular. She hoped everything would go alright with K.O. The strong hero headed back into their home to enjoy the peace that today was offering.

* * *

Shannon was at home, making sure she was not missing anything important. She had even polished up to make her synthetic skin and metallic body shimmer perfectly, but had not changed her attire otherwise.

" _My…_ you look like you just came straight off the assembly line," Raymond complimented his older sister as he sat idly nearby. Only he knew what she was doing tonight, he appreciated her trusting him with this information of her plans for the night.

"Thanks, Raymond. It's nice to have you not be snarky for a change," Shannon hummed, though she knew that would not last for long. She appreciated his support in this confusing time of hers.

"So, you're simply going to indulge them tonight with this date?" the sports addicted robot queried. He presumed the plan was to use this as a means to show that the two would not work well together, what better way to get to know one another than a date?

"Yeah. Your advice is working out great so far," the orange robot was surprised that it was actually working, usually her brothers advice was far from ideal or rarely useful.

"For this being a simple indulging session… you certainly seem energetic about it. You've been smiling more than ever since they agreed to this date," Raymond spoke. Shannon began to realize what he said as true, but she had not realized it yet herself.

"Yeah… _I guess…_ " Shannon sighed, not really sure what to think of this. She was excited to be going on a date with K.O., even she could not believe that. A boy she could actually relax with, and trust around her. The most innocent person in existence. The thought coursed through her system like warm blood, it was very comforting to her.

Raymond laughed lightly. "Well, I wish you luck at this party date… you did inform them what kind of party this is, correct?" Raymond asked, while standing at the doorway about to leave.

" _Yes?_ " the young female bot gave an innocent smile. Her brother shook his head, knowing she had let that part slip her mind.

"Well, have fun. If you need anything just call. Oh, also, you're running late," Raymond pointed at the clock on the wall, remembering the time she had told him was when her date began.

" _ **Oh no!**_ " Shannon gasped in horror at the realization. She let some of her many saw blades pop out of her feet before zipping off like they were roller blades, knocking her younger brother down as she darted by in a shiny orange flash.

" _Ough…_ for being nothing more than an indulging session, she seems committed to it," Raymond held his head, beginning to worry about his sister. He knew she would call her family to help if she needed it. Still, he wondered what this human that enamored Shannon was like if they had cured her depression so well.

* * *

K.O. waited at the park he had been told to meet his date at early, he looked at his phone. The time read 5:14. He had somehow managed to arrive barely on time thanks to his speed. He just felt nervous about his first date, no amount of mental preparation could make him ready for this.

" _I hope she didn't change her mind…_ " the Level 3 hero mumbled to himself. A part of him started making him worry that this was some strange Boxmore trap, but he shook that thought off. He couldn't worry too much or assume the worst with everything.

K.O. looked at his phone for another moment, and then decided to mute it. He didn't want anything interrupting the date if he could help it. He then pocketed it.

"Sorry I'm late! I got distracted!" Shannon's voice made him relieved. He saw her coming toward him. Shannon panted, but was glad to have made it without being more than a little late. She let her saw blades retract back into her feet and let them return to normal.

"It's okay. I was late, too," K.O. reassured. The orange bot looked him over with a raised eyebrow. She saw that fancy tuxedo top he was wearing. It matched his adorable charm, but she thought it was not right for the occasion. It made her wonder if she had misunderstood the party invitation she had received, only to remember she forgot to tell him what kind of party this was to begin with.

"Why are you dressed like that for?" she asked.

" _I-_ I wanted to look nice for our date…" K.O. squeaked in reply. She wanted to tell him to take it off, but she saw this as a good thing.

"That'll make it easier to disguise you at least," Shannon said as she began rummaging around in her pockets for something.

"Disguise?" the Level 3 hero chirped to the young villain.

"Yeah. Not exactly wanting it public that I went on a date with a hero. I know you don't want everyone to know the same about you dating a villain," Shannon took out a small remote that was covered in many dials and buttons that she began fiddling with.

"I don't mind, Shannon. I'm just happy to be on a date with you," K.O. stated in his assuring tone. He was simply glad to be given this opportunity.

" _You…_ you don't care if people know you're going on a date with a villain?" Shannon found that hard to believe.

"It's not like they pick who I can and can't go out with, right?" K.O. gave a thumbs up. She was staring at him in surprise at his rather unexpected confidence.

"Consider this me doing you a favor then," Shannon let a small antenna pop out from the remote. She aimed it at him and hit the button. K.O. gasped, expecting the worst. He closed his eyes and flinched.

" _Uhh…_ Nothing happened?" the Level 3 hero saw or felt nothing different, but then he saw his date smile as she waved the strange complex looking remote.

"This is daddy's newest invention. The Disguise-o-matic. I gave you a bit of a makeover with it," Shannon let one of her sharp saw blades pop out so he could use it as a mirror. K.O. was surprised by what he saw in the reflection.

" _Wow…_ I look like a robot," K.O. said in awe. It was like he was wearing a fake metallic mask. His hair was mostly trapped underneath it. It was a synthetic appearance that made it look all the more unnaturally natural.

"Yeah! I had to practice a good bit to learn how to do that," Shannon proudly hummed. She put the remote control away. She saw the time approaching six though according to her internal time tracker. "Come on, we don't wanna be late," she insisted, ready to go with her disguised date for the night to this party.

"Oh, wait a second," K.O. stopped her by grabbing her hand.

"What?" she looked to him, confused. He rummaged through his pockets as well, and he pulled out a small clear box that had a bright daisy corsage within it. He nervously held it up to her, she took it after a moments pause.

"What's this for? This isn't a prom," Shannon asked as she opened the box, looking at the nice flower that shimmered under the sunset.

"Oh, _uh…_ My old babysitter used to tell me that you should do something special for your dates, because they are special," K.O. explained. Though she might not be around as much in his life anymore, he still remembered a lot of what Punching Judy taught him when he was younger.

Shannon could not describe this feeling welling up inside her. She took the corsage out from the box before sliding it onto her wrist with the band. The warm feeling of pure joy felt nice to her for a change. K.O. was just as happy to see her smiling as well. His sweet charm and positive attitude was starting to rub off on her.

" _K.O…._ Thank you," Shannon went down on her knees and wrapped her arms around him tightly. The young hero did not expect this. It was strange to have her be so kind for a change instead of hearing all the insults and shouting he was used to getting from her in their many battles over the years. K.O. gladly returned the embrace with his own.

"Come on, you're going to love this party," Shannon insisted they get moving, despite how she wished for the moment to never end.

"Right," K.O. nodded. The two began to walk off, leaving the park. As they walked, the two were holding hands, though they barely noticed, they did not really mind it even once it did register.

 _ **"Maybe… Maybe there is more between us than I thought…"**_ Shannon had that thought stick to her mind quite prominently. She shook her head, trying to forget that thought. _"Remember, just enjoy the night and then he'll forget all about his interest by tomorrow,"_ she whispered to herself.


	7. Old friend

K.O. and Shannon had traveled a short distance into this part of town, a little away from where they had met at. Things seemed really lively here for still being early in the night, the Level 3 hero was looking around in awe, having forgotten about his own disguise, even with how unnoticeable it felt.

"How do you know where to go, Shannon? It looks like the whole town's in a giant party here," K.O. wondered if they were lost, or if this was just that type of theme for the party. His date laughed a little at his overwhelmed awe.

"I've been here hundreds of times, so I know where I'm going. This is kind of where I was created," Shannon explained. She wished she could reminisce more on her memories, but she wanted to focus on the task at hand for tonight.

"This is where you were born? _Wow…_ " K.O. was in awe. It was a lot more complex than he made it out to be. The orange Boxmore bot guessed that was not wrong.

"Oh, here we are!" Shannon gasped in excitement, pointing dead ahead to a small building. The hero was confused. He imagined the place this party would be taking place at to be a lot bigger, but he didn't mind at all. He was just glad to see his date excited.

When they got to the door, Shannon knocked eagerly, the two waiting outside for a response.

"What are your friends like?" K.O. chirped to his date. She shrugged.

"They're kind of like distant family. More than friends. We were all built off the same base coding design," Shannon answered, though her reply confused her date a lot. She knew he wasn't the brightest person out there, but she appreciated the obvious effort he was putting in to trying to understand. "Basically, we all were originally programmed to be woodworking bots, but they needed help finishing us, so daddy agreed for easy money," the orange bot began retelling the story with a clear warmth to her voice that made her feel like she was at peace as she flashed back to it.

" _Wow…_ that was really nice of Boxman," K.O. was in awe. But that didn't really explain how she became a Boxmore baddy bot.

"Yeah… but daddy saw the potential in me, so he stole my code and built around it," Shannon finished. Essentially her father stole an unfinished AI program and grew it on his own as an easy method to work around a few issues.

"Well… at least he's sweet in an evil way?" K.O. couldn't really say much beyond that without coming off as rude.

"Yeah, but my friends wound up getting bought by other villains as servants after the woodworking company closed down. It's how we reconnected, or at least, a few of us did." Shannon stated.

A ding stopped their conversation. The young robot opened the door, revealing an elevator inside.

"An elevator?" K.O. chirped, but he did not really question it. The two of them stepped on. The young girl shut the door behind them and hit the only button available. The elevator began to move shortly after.

"What kind of party is this?" K.O. requested to know. He had neglected asking her before. Now he was becoming too curious.

"Oh. It's nothing special. It's just a simple hunting party," the orange robot replied. For some reason hearing that enthralled K.O. The imagination of hunting down big bad monsters in a group thrilled him.

"It's nice to know I won't be hunting alone for a change," Shannon commented to herself more than her date though, as she got a little distracted in her imagination. She felt K.O. take her hand into his and hold it tight.

"Don't worry. I promise to be the best hunting partner date I can be!" K.O. promised, giving that enthusiastic thumbs up to her. Shannon returned his promise with a bright smile, simply joyful to have him with her for this gathering.

The elevator came to a sudden halt, almost throwing the young boy to the floor. The doors opened a moment after. The Level 3 hero went wide eyed at what he saw.

"Yeah, that's how I looked when I first came here," Shannon giggled at his reaction as they stepped off the elevator. It was a giant forest deep underground. There was somehow even a sky here, but K.O. could not even tell if it was fake.

"It's so pretty…" K.O. could only say. The lush growth of the place and the trees that made this thick jungle amazed him. Even a lot of animals were noticeable with barely any glance.

There was a small group of people gathered up around. From what K.O. could tell, they were all robots, as well as villains. He felt a little nervous, though he did his best to relax.

"Shannon? There you are!" the two heard an energetic voice chime up. They turned around to see a similarly aged robot girl that had a blue metallic tint to their roundish armor, and a pair of drill halves on both of her shoulders.

"Percer! It's been so long!" Shannon exclaimed, almost tackling her friend with a tight embrace. Percer gladly returned it without hesitation. The two looked like quite a pair. The disguised hero guessed that distant relative comparison was a lot more accurate than his date described.

The embrace soon ended. "Who's this guy?" Percer asked.

Shannon held her date's hand as she presented him. "This is… ehhmm…" Shannon realized that could not speak her date's real name without it being known he was a hero. K.O. stood there obliviously with a smile on his face, wondering why she looked so scared suddenly.

"Em, huh? Beats being named after your manufacturing number," Percer did not pay the name any mind. She crouched down to the young teenagers height and shook his hand gladly. "So, what brings you here little fella?" the drill bot politely asked assuming that the disguised K.O. was simply a training dummy bot. It took K.O. a moment to register his disguise nickname now.

" _O-_ oh! I'm on a date with Shannon! This is my first hunting party!" the Level 3 hero exclaimed. The party host looked shocked to hear that. The drill bot looked to her dear friend as she stood up. Shannon was looking to the side with a nervous blush growing on her face. She appreciated K.O.'s modesty, but it still embarrassed her slightly.

"Shannon… you finally are in a relationship?" Percer gave a cocky grin with their hands on their hips.

" _ **N-No!**_ This is our first date!" the orange bot held her hands up defensively, her embarrassment only growing.

"Wow… well the hunt will begin soon. Good luck, little guy. Shannon here has quite the temper. Haha!" Percer made to walk away after giving out her warning, so she could go to attend to the other party goers.

"Are you okay, Shannon?" K.O. asked his date as he tried to escort her aside to a long table. Mechanical food and drinks were spread out for those invited.

"Yeah, yeah, _just…_ how are you able to stay so calm about this?" Shannon was impressed at how calm the Level 3 hero was being. All the time, she was stressing over being possibly caught.

"You're my date. I'm supposed to only care about you tonight," K.O. gave a smile. Shannon started at him in surprise. If anyone else said that, she would roll her eyes at them, but coming from the most honest and innocent human, she knew it meant a lot.

"Thank you, K.O…." Shannon held her hand over her corsage for self-assurance. Once it was done, the two took a few seats at the table to try and rest for a moment.

* * *

The two spent a short while talking to one another, not about much however. "So, this is Percer's dad's base?" he asked. He was surprised that such a beautiful place belonged to a villain hiding in public.

"Yeah it is. Percer always throws one of these parties whenever he goes out of town on business," Shannon responded, eating one of the pieces of metal at the table. K.O. took a sip out of an oil can that had a straw in it, which made her quirk an eyebrow. " _Uhh…_ is that safe for humans to drink?" she asked. The brush haired boy didn't seem to even register what he was drinking.

"Oh… I've drank worse than this," the disguised hero commented before taking another sip. Most healing potions tasted awful to him. He didn't really care though, as long as it quenched his thirst. His date just tried to ignore it.

 _"I swear he's trying to act more like a robot for me…_ " Shannon thought. As sweet as it sounded in premise, she just knew how innocently oblivious he could be.

"But you said you haven't seen your friend in a while," K.O. reminded her, breaking her train of thought.

"Because I wasn't as good at fighting so I couldn't hunt as well… So, I just began avoiding them for a while," Shannon sighed, laying her head on her arms. Her confidence in her abilities was still lacking.

"Come on. How tough can this hunting party be? I'll be here to help you, no matter what," K.O. reassured. Shannon smiled a little at his words. Of course she wouldn't be alone, and it was nice to have someone far more reliable than her siblings helping for a change.

"The hunt's only as tough as the monsters they let out. Every group has their own to hunt and the three fastest hunting groups win," Shannon explained the hunting party's conditions. The winners tended to get special prizes to represent their placements.

"I just hope we get an easy one…" K.O. was not a fan of fighting animals. He hoped these were simply monsters more than anything.

They then heard the sound of a microphone loudly ringing out to get the villains and their cohorts' attentions. The two daters got up to join the small crowd around the table. They could see Percer standing on a makeshift stage.

"You all havin' a good time?" the driller bot asked.

" **Yeah!** " a crowd cheered out loudly. K.O. was surprised by how excited everyone was. He only saw that with Enid when she was playing music as DJ Fireball.

"Well, it's about to get a whole lot better!" Percer retracted their hand into their arm before firing out sheets of paper into the air for everyone to catch. Shannon caught one for both of them, and she and K.O. read it. It read the name of the creature they'd have to hunt down; 'Oil Lizard'.

"An Oil Lizard? Wow… I never thought I'd see one in real life…" K.O. sounded ecstatic for this. But Shannon was nervous. Her buzzsaws tended to leave burning hot sparks a lot. If they collided with easily flammable oil, it would be a nasty mix.

 _ **"Now let your hunts begin!"**_


	8. Teamwork

The hunt was on. The partygoers scattered across the giant jungle of a villains' base. The young pair had left in their own separate direction, like most of the other hunter groups, to find the monster they had been assigned to defeat.

Along the way, K.O. had been explaining what oil lizards could do and how they behaved to Shannon to try and get her prepared. The orange robot was simply surprised at how knowledgeable her date was when it came to monsters.

"How do you know so much about monsters?" Shannon questioned as they walked, interrupting one of her date's warnings about what to look out for specifically.

"Oh, my mommy used to read me her bestiary before bed. When I got older, I started reading it a lot myself to learn so I could be more prepared as a hero," K.O. explained. The routine followed him for a long while out of that phase of his life to help him become more informed of how to deal with monsters, the info was stuck within his thick skull clearly.

"That sounds… pretty nice really," Shannon was still caught off guard by his surprising intelligence when it came to this.

"Don't worry. I'm sure we'll do great together on this hunt!" K.O. reached up and held his date's hand tight. The Boxmore bot felt warmed by his kindness like before, she was enjoying having this feeling constantly. She had not felt like this in a long time. He suddenly saw something that caught his attention. "Hey, look," he pointed over to it.

Shannon and K.O. approached one of the many bushes that this jungle held. There was a black tarry substance smeared on it. "Yep. That's definitely oil," Shannon looked it over, picking a little up on her finger to examine it. This oil was much thicker than it was in natural slicks.

"That's a lot for an oil lizard…" K.O. murmured. Usually that species of monster was barely big enough to surpass most people's knees. Soon he noticed a tree that had large claw marks on it with small traces of oil left as well. " _Hey, Shannon…?_ " the Level 3 hero chirped.

"Yea?" she replied, only to see what he was referring to. She did not like the looks of these claw traces either.

"How big are the monsters your friend usually gets?" K.O. hesitated to ask. He should be scared, and he was partially, yet he was far more excited to see the giant beast they might be hunting after.

"Depends on how courageous they feel for the party… This is a first though," Shannon responded. Percer had certainly upped their game since they had last met, it made the young orange robot fear for her dates safety.

"This is going to be fun," K.O. grinned before rushing ahead. His date shook her head, not sure if she should appreciate his enthusiasm, or be concerned with the blind optimism. The Boxmore girl continued to follow, thinking they were close to finding the monster at this rate.

* * *

The two had been on the trail for a short while now. Even during their search they came across more signs of the oil lizards presence. They even spotted few other hunting parties' targets, which they simply avoided to not waste time with.

The two eventually found what they were looking for in a small valley of trees. There was a large reptile eating fruit bushes. It was devouring them whole like it had not eaten in years.

" _That is…_ one giant oil lizard…" K.O. stared, his mouth agape. The oil lizard's skin was secreting the black substance every step it took. They tended to use it to their advantage to slow attackers down. But this one was nearly as large as a dragon, it made them think it was the predator instead of the prey now.

" _My saws won't be useful here…_ " Shannon sighed, the feeling of worthlessness coming back slightly. She hated being unable to use her primary capabilities. It meant she would have to rely on her secondary power in its place.

"Yeah… everything will catch on fire if you use them," K.O. did not need that to be reminded to him, "But I think I have a plan," he smiled.

Shannon raised an eyebrow, wondering what he had in mind.

* * *

As the oil lizard stomped around, looking for more berry bushes to consume whole like rough salads, it began to hear a high-pitched whirring of a buzzsaw, the noise alone made it pause.

The giant reptile breathed out its nostrils, growling as it peered around, as if anticipating an attack. A pair of the taller nearby trees began to fall after the whirring came to an end. Both of them falling on top of the oily monster causing it to let out a loud echoing roar of pain, it was forced to the ground by the weight of the heavy trees.

" **Hey, ugly!** " Shannon called out, standing atop the stump of one of the two trees she had chopped down. Her presence got the giant oil lizard's attention. It growled beginning to stand back up its feet, the trees slipping off its slick body, it was stomping on the ground as it did so. She threw a rock, hitting its face with it. The oil secreting beast let out a loud roar as she ran off, with it now in hot pursuit. Each step it took shaking the area beneath them.

Shannon didn't think her date could be this crazy with plans. She kept running, really wishing she could use her buzzsaws right now, though she knew she couldn't judge her date for his plans, not when she had dragged him along to a hunting party without telling him.

She managed to get to a place fraught with trees and bushes. K.O. stood in wait, hiding from the lizard's sight above in one of the trees. He waited, until his cue came. It didn't take long for the monster to get right under him.

" _ **Yaaaah!**_ " K.O. jumped down with a battle cry, creating a pair of large aura fists around his arms, bringing them together before slamming down with full force onto the head of the overgrown monster.

 _"Talk about brave,"_ Shannon thought while she tried to get her stamina back. The Level 3 hero held onto the oily monster, punching the sides of its head repeatedly. The oil lizard tried shaking him off, thrashing around and crashing into some of the many nearby trees.

"This isn't working…!" K.O. groaned. His mother's bestiary informed him that oil lizard's weakest point was their head. Yet this one's was thicker than the bodega cleaner's own skull. He ended up getting shaken off, as the oil made it impossible for him to keep a grip. He fell back first to the ground. He noticed the giant dinosaur turn to him snarling. That was when he noticed that its fangs looked metallic.

K.O. saw the oil lizard beginning to click its teeth together. It took in a deep breath, causing sparks to fly all over, before it spat out a large ball of oil. The sparks turned it into a giant ball of fire in an instance, that went charging for the young hero.

" _ **Look out!**_ " Shannon extended the sawblades from her feet and darted to quickly get her date out of the way just in time.

"Oh… Shannon, I don't think I like your friend anymore…" K.O. coughed from the jarring grab. They saw nothing but a wave of fiery destruction where the monster had attacked them.

"I'll break 'em the next time I see them," Shannon huffed. Normally she would be indifferent if she got destroyed herself. She could reload into another body. Her date on the other hand, had only one life to his name that she couldn't afford to have thrown away, and knowing it was at risk right now made her upset.

"Watch out!" K.O. called out as the two threw themselves aside to dodge another giant fireball. The forest around them was becoming a burning nightmare, with ash floating around in the air.

"Okay, can't use my saws, so…!" Shannon guessed she had no choice but to use her secondary ability. She transformed into a large hammer by shifting her body. K.O. quickly caught onto her plan, hoping she did not mind. He grabbed her by the handle.

"Take this!" K.O. grinned. As the oil lizard prepared its next flame ball, he hit the side of its jaw with a swing of the oversized mallet, forcing it to stop as well as cracking its metal teeth.

The Level 3 hero jumped up, raising the weapon overhead before swinging downward with full force onto its skull. That combo had done enough to make the oil lizard's teeth shatter. It fell over to its side with a large thud, kicking up more ash as its body hit the ground. It was down and out.

" _Ohhhh…_ Is it over…?" Shannon asked dizzily as she turned back to normal. K.O. held her bridal style in his arms.

"Yep! We won! We actually make a good team," the young boy told his date with a proud smile. He could not wait to tell his mother that he beat a giant oil lizard. Though they could not relish in the victory for long, as a tree crashed beside them. The fire spread around them further.

"Let's get out of here," K.O. insisted before running off with Shannon in his arms. She wanted to say she could walk on her own, but something at the back of her mind told her to just relax and enjoy it.

* * *

The young pair arrived back at where the main party had been gathered originally. There were a few hunting groups back already, and clearly their injuries indicated they all had their respective wins and losses as well as tough monsters.

"Ah, you two're back already? Figured I sent you out on a hunt, not a make-out session," Percer welcomed them back with a joke. K.O. stood Shannon back up on her feet. She put her hands on her hips, looking angry.

"What were you thinking getting such big dangerous monsters like that?!" Shannon demanded an explanation, as she stomped up to Percer. Her date tonight could have been killed during that hunt because of this carelessness. K.O. just stood there quietly, having not expected her to get so worked up.

"Just wanted to make this hunting party better than the last few so I just asked for bigger ones… Why are you so angry? I figured you'd be excited for that," Percer was confused. But it seemed every word that passed their lips made Shannon angrier.

"That thing lit half the place on fire and nearly turned my date into crisp!" the Boxmore bot countered. K.O. hated to imagine how angry the drill bot's villain of a boss would be if he found out about the damage.

"So what? He can just reload into another body!" Percer at least assumed this, "You expect me to care that you had one bad run in with a monster, just because you still suck at fighting after all these years?"

Shannon was infuriated. She threw a hard punch to their face, knocking them down to their side. Everyone around them was stunned.

"You've really stopped caring about everyone but yourself, haven't you?" Shannon huffed. It upset her how much worse her old friend had become over the years. "Em, let's go. We'll pass on whatever stupid prize we earned," she ordered to K.O., it took him a moment to snap out of his shock

" _Okay…_ " K.O. nodded, beginning to follow his date toward the elevator. Percer felt their own rage brewing. The driller bot retracted their left hand into their arm, and a sharp drill erected in place.

" ** _No one starts a fight and walks away that easily!_** " Percer fired the drill. It rocketed towards Shannon while her back was turned.

Before it could collide with her, K.O. caught wind. He threw an aura fist that darted between the two, catching the drill and crushing it into pieces. Now it was his turn to be angry clearly.

"Hitting someone in the back is a dirty way to fight. If you want a real fight, I'll give you one fairly," K.O. declared bitterly as Shannon stood there in awe. Percer was gritting their teeth, but they did no more. K.O. turned around to leave, and Shannon followed, the couple leaving for the elevator. The young boy had one thought in his head left however.

 _ **"I wonder if this is normal for a first date...?"**_


	9. Relationship

_**Authors Note: Sorry about this chapter being short, it was the only good place to end it off though for it'd of gone on way too long if I continued it past there. Sorry about that.**_

* * *

K.O. and Shannon had returned to the park they met up at initially. The two had been quiet during the walk. Night had fallen, and the stars shined brightly in the sky overhead. Shannon took out the disguise device and pressed a few buttons before aiming at her date in front of her.

"And there we go," Shannon hummed. The synthetic mask her date was wearing was gone in seconds. The Level 3 hero held his face as relief washed over him.

"I was worried I'd wind up stuck that way for a good while," he nervously chuckled. Since most of Boxman's inventions had a severe oversight to them, he feared the worst. It was a good thing they both left the party before things got even crazier.

His bright aura faded though when he saw Shannon taking a seat beneath the nearby tree. The aura she gave off was a haze of gloomy blue. "Shannon, what's wrong?" he went over to her. She was looking solemnly at the beautiful night sky. What they had just been through had hurt her badly.

"It's just… because of me, you could have died… I'm sorry," Shannon claimed. Despite taking it out on Percer for their involvement, she blamed herself.

"Well I'm a hero. I'm at risk of dying every day," K.O. shrugged it off. It was just something he got used to as a hero. He guessed the same applied to villains, but not so much to robotic beings. Still, he felt he was at fault for Shannon's friendship with Percer just ending on the spot.

He came over to his date and took a seat beside her. She held her corsage in her hands like she was seeking solace from it. "I had a lot of fun tonight," he blurted out. It shocked his date. Shannon expected him to be upset with how the party had gone.

"You did? I feel like it was a real mess…" Shannon replied. K.O. and his positivism were all she thought was good about the date. But what to do now. For a simple indulging session, everything had gone off the rails.

She felt K.O.'s hand tightly wrapped around hers in a reassuring matter. She looked down to see his bright adorable face looking up to her, their eyes meeting.

" _What are you…?_ " Shannon raised an eyebrow, confused.

"Don't feel bad. For my first date, this was the best! _I…_ I'm sorry if it seemed like I was ignoring your feelings for a while," K.O. was unsure if this proved that possibility that she'd been interested in him for a while. If it was, it made him feel guilty.

" _My feelings…?_ " Shannon murmured. It had been a while since she had heard anyone else actively apologize for making her feel bad. The implication alone made her feel happy. She knew her brothers cared, they just were bad at expressing it.

"You said you felt useless to your family. But to me, you're the energetic, cute and unpredictable Shannon," K.O. was unsure if it helped, but he found that it was good to just speak his mind.

Shannon's eyes began to water. She wrapped her arms around him tightly. K.O. simply returned the embrace, glad to see her happy. "Nobody has ever been this sweet to me before…" she exclaimed. Since the start of this date, K.O. had been doing his best to try and make her feel special. Now, she wanted to keep that feeling for as long as she could.

That tore it then. Shannon vowed to forget about that plan Raymond had given her. She wasn't going to bring herself to break his young heart with a scheme like this, it was clear it would never have worked.

The embrace broke after a moment. K.O. felt his own heart pounding as the two leaned in. At last, their lips touched, and locked. The moonlight shimmered over them as the two shared their passionate kiss.

The two broke apart after a minute, though it felt eternal. K.O. stared in awe with his mouth agape. Never in his life before this date, did he think he would ever get this close to Shannon, but now that he was, he was blazing with joy.

" _Th…_ that was amazing…" K.O. stammered. His date had a blush on her face, her gaze downwards. She almost felt shameful for acting on her emotions.

"Yeah… my first real kiss," Shannon breathed. She felt conflicted, between being joyous at the date going far better than she'd have ever hoped and being in love with a hero.

"Don't wo-worry! It was my first time too!" K.O. tried to reassure, though he guessed she had no memories from her time with Rad.

The robot pulled the Level 3 hero to her side as they sat under the tree, holding him close. Things fell silent between the two. Everything that had just happened on this date was catching up to them.

"Shannon?" he chirped.

"Yeah, K.O.?" Shannon murmured, afraid for what he might say next, despite his obvious cheerfulness to this.

"What does this mean… y'know, for us…?" K.O. meekly wondered. What would happen to them now was uncertain. His little mind could tell that their kiss was a big game changer. Nothing would ever be the same again after this.

"Well… it means we're either in a relationship now… or we aren't and we have to do our best to pretend tonight never happened," Shannon stated the options at hand, trying to ignore her emotional circuit. Her feelings right now confused her to no end.

"Do you want to be in a relationship?" K.O. asked.

" _…uh…_ " Shannon was uncertain. Part of her was screaming at her accept. The other begged to turn him down to avoid an inevitable misery from all the hardships that would come with a villain and a hero dating. "D…Do you?" she gulped, nervous as ever. K.O. rubbed his head, trying think of a reply. She waited for him to answer, while her anxiety rose over the roof.

"Sure! Why not?" K.O. exclaimed happily.

"R…really?" Shannon could not believe her ears. She tried to contain her excitement to hearing him agree.

"Yeah! I've never had a girlfriend before, and I have a lot of fun with you," K.O. claimed. He was glad to treat it as a welcomed new experience. Maybe, if they were lucky, they would not tear each other apart as much in their battles.

"Thank you so much, K.O.! I'm happy to be with someone as sweet as you," Shannon hugged him tightly. K.O. swore he felt some of his bones cracking, but he tried to relax and return the hug, feeling warm from her affection. He could hardly wait to tell his mother about tonight. He had only one thought in mind now.

 _ **"Tonight has been, amazing..."**_


	10. Hidden Truths

K.O. just arrived home after a long time spent walking, lost deep in thought all the way. He could not believe the outcome of tonight. His heart felt ready to burst in joy.

"Mom, I'm home!" K.O. entered the house, closing the door behind him, though he heard nothing back in reply. All he found was Carol sleeping on the couch with the TV on. It was obvious that she had fallen asleep while waiting for her brave boy to get home, out of worry for how the date might go.

"Guess I should get ready for bed," the Level 3 hero shrugged, heading for his room knowing he had to get ready for work tomorrow.

K.O. got out of the tuxedo top and got into his pajamas. As he stood in front of the small mirror in the bathroom to brush his teeth, he heard a familiar voice ring out in his head.

 ** _"You're seriously going to date Shannon?"_** a rougher voice chimed up.

"Oh hey, T.K.O. …and yeah, why?" K.O. responded to his other half, an internal evil twin in his head that he shared powers with.

 ** _"I just can't believe you're going for a villain, out of everyone you know,"_ **T.K.O. retorted. K.O raised an eyebrow.

"Why're you so upset about that?" K.O. asked. T.K.O. rarely gave any emotion about romance beyond boredom. "I mean… as long as you're with me, I'm half villain too, right?" he tried to joke, but heard an irritated grumble in response from his other half.

 _ **"What about Dendy?"**_ T.K.O. suddenly blurted out from nowhere, catching his good side off guard as he brushed his teeth.

"What about her?" K.O. gargled, not really paying much attention to his more anger prone half. Random rants about his decisions were not unusual. T.K.O. was like a devil on his shoulder.

 _ **"Oh nothing, other than how she likes us a lot,"**_ T.K.O. argued, _**"A lot more than just friends."**_

"You mean like siblings?" K.O. innocently chirped back. He finished brushing his teeth at this point. He left the bathroom, ready for bed. He returned to his room.

T.K.O. was peeved. Was the hero just oblivious to their kappa friend's feelings, or was he pretending to be? **_"She loves you! And you didn't even think about her at all during this?"_** T.K.O. demanded. Ever since the suggestion of Shannon liking the hero was brought up a couple of days ago, it bugged him. He had been hoping it would be ignored. Alas, K.O. just had to return Shannon's feelings. K.O could feel the anger on his dark half over all of this.

"Are you sure Dendy loves me? 'Cause I don't think so… I'm just a really interesting person to study," K.O. countered. Not that he disliked Dendy at all, but he knew she was extremely fascinated in his capabilities, and his incredibly fast growth in strength, much like any budding scientist. "And besides, I thought you hated Dendy…" K.O. had a sudden conclusion coming to mind. " _Wait…_ does that mean… you actually like her?"

T.K.O. went completely silent.

"Hello? T.K.O.?" the Level 3 hero chirped lightly, knocking on his own skull. When he received no response, he shrugged before lying on his bed, resting his head on his pillow. His mind was clouded quickly with thoughts of tonight. K.O. simply closed his eyes, gaining a smile on his face as he started relishing the memories.

* * *

Shannon was back in her room, cleaning herself up after the hunting party disaster. She looked down at her corsage for confirmation. She couldn't believe it was all real. She did not want to take the item off either.

Shannon got snapped out of her thoughts when she heard the door knock, scaring her a little. " _C-_ come in!" she hoped it wasn't her father. She had already returned the disguise-o-matic to its proper holding place in the inventions cabinet where everything still undergoing testing went.

"Thank you, Shannon," Raymond's voice relieved his sister. He entered into the room closing the door behind him. "So, how did your date go?" Raymond went up to her, looking eager to hear the details.

Shannon was unsure if she should tell him everything. She was nervous about what would happen if he knew. She might not remember her time with Rad, but if she did, she would be more than aware of how much of a disaster that was last time. " _It…_ It went fine… but I'm no longer friends with Percer now," Shannon tried to put it simply. She was still so gloomy about losing a friend.

"I didn't think you were that close with them anymore… Sorry for that though," Raymond replied, "Everything went according to plan?"

His sister took a seat on her bed. "No," she rested her head in her hands, "everything went the opposite…"

It took a moment for her little brother to process that. "So they're even more interested in you now?"

His sister nodded as she tried to gather her confidence for what she was going to say next.

" _Not just him…_ " she fearfully squeaked out, gripping her corsage covered wrist gently for assurance. She decided to trust her brother with at least one slice of the truth. "We're now a pair."

Her brother raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"We've decided that from now on…" Shannon breathed in, anxious to say it, "We're going to be a… _c-_ couple."

"You're what?!" Raymond gawked aloud.

"Please, Raymond," his older sister motioned him to calm down. Yet she expected it to be ineffective. She just knew he wouldn't take it well.

"You dating a human? That's preposterous, Shannon!" Raymond shouted, "That is no better than when you were with that alien!"

Shannon froze, she wanted to retort but then what he said processed in her mind. "When I was… what?"

Raymond realized his mistake. He had spoken about the past incident without realizing it. The female Boxmore bot stood up, feeling a circuit break. There was a large secret being kept from her, and knowing that for some reason angered her to no end. She grabbed Raymond and pinned him against the wall.

"Now you listen to me," she snarled, her sharp teeth showing, "The boy I'm dating is the sweetest and most caring person I've ever met in my entire life! He made me feel like I'm more than just a bad selling robot! He stood up for me and actually cared about how I felt! Do you know how long it's been since anyone has done that for me? Do you?!"

" _Y-_ yeah, I mean no?!" Raymond stuttered while the emotionally driven Shannon towered over him. He'd never seen her enter this new level of rage, clearly it had been pent up for quite some time and this was the final straw that broke it all.

"Yes, I'm dating a human! So what?! I don't care that he is one! For the first time in months, I can say I'm happy without faking a smile!" Shannon deployed one of her many buzzsaws from her left hand, and slowly raised it to his head. "Now you're going to do two things for me, Raymond. First, you're going to keep this secret from everyone!" she hissed through her teeth.

Raymond paused for a moment, taking her words into account. He had not seen this sort of passion coming from his older sister for so long. "Yes, I will, I promise," he nodded frantically. He could see that she had a lot worse intentions than just simply forcing him to reload into another body. "A-and the second thing?" he asked, feeling the breeze of the saw whirring violently near his head.

"You'll tell me what you meant by _'when I was with that alien'_ , or else I'll cut you apart one piece at a time, disconnect your auto reload feature, take your memory storage unit and find out for myself," Shannon snarled. She didn't need to say that she would only allow him to reload into another body afterwards, if and when she felt like it.

"Alright, alright, just please calm down! I'll tell you everything…!" Raymond implored, being extremely cautious. She retracted her buzzsaw before letting him go and crossing her arms, ready to hear it.

* * *

So came the long explanation about his sister and Radicles' relationship. Raymond wanted to leave out his and Darrell's involvement in that relationship ending. This though meant no proper explanation for how Shannon's love for Radicles just ended, and she would not take anything but the full story, inevitably it all got dragged out.

* * *

When it was all said and done, Shannon was standing there, holding her chest with a swollen feeling of confused emotions. She felt sorrow and guilt.

"Shannon, I'm sorry," Raymond spoke, "We just didn't want you to be in a fake love... Your emotional circuit was damaged. That's why we had to stop it."

"And you thought not telling me anything that happened at all was a good idea…?" Shannon glared. She was ready to destroy him twenty times for this.

"Because it wasn't you! It was just your malfunctioning emotional circuits!" the sports loving robot defended himself. However, just as Shannon was about to start tearing him limb from limb with her saws, they heard the door open suddenly without warning.

"I am Jethro," Jethro called out, standing there with their engine idling. The two other siblings paused. Jethro had come to tell them they were supposed to attack the plaza tomorrow, and were ordered to start preparing a plan tonight.

Shannon pouted, turning her back on Raymond and making beginning to leave her own room to get ready for tomorrow.

"Shannon," Raymond called to her. Shannon stopped in her tracks. She almost wished to just ignore what else he wanted to say, but she had the heart to at least listen. "Promise me that… you'll at least come to us if anything's wrong," Raymond pleaded, trying to just make his brotherly concern known.

Shannon said nothing and continued to walk away. Jethro simply turned around and rolled off to follow, leaving the sports bot alone, not inquiring further. Raymond could only process all that happened, hoping that his older sister wouldn't do anything too hasty.


	11. Feigned Fight

It was a little late into the morning, K.O. was riding in the passenger side seat of his mother's car while she drove. He was quite content after how last night went, while being often lost in his thoughts.

"You never told me how the date went last night honey," Carol broke the ice. The high-level hero was glad to see her son happy though. It gave her an idea on how things went last night, but she had been waiting for him to start that discussion since breakfast.

"Oh, they went alright. We went to a hunting party. We won, but the monster we got paired against was huge!" K.O. explained with a bright grin on his face. The immense pleasure he had gotten from fighting a tough opponent like that was obvious.

"Your first monster hunting party? I figured you'd wind up doing that with Rad and Enid one day," Carol joked. It might be unusual for a date night, let alone a first date, but she was happy to hear it went well for him. "But I wanted to know about the date part more than the party."

K.O. nodded, but he was a little nervous to confess to how everything exactly went. "We-well she really liked the corsage I got her… But I think because of me she lost her friend. She talked about how she wasn't used to having someone treat her so nicely," he still felt bad about Shannon's lost friend. Maybe their friendship had been quite fragile from the start. He was debating telling the most important part of the results to his mom, he was uncertain about announcing he had a girlfriend now.

"That's great, peanut! I was worried you'd be too nervous to do anything," Carol giggled. She had expected it to not end the best, she was relieved that everything was alright.

"So I gotta ask…" the high-level hero started.

"Are you going to go out with'em again?" Carol asked innocently enough. K.O. gave a bright smile and nodded.

"Yeah! I'm sure we will," the level 3 hero declared hearing that made his mother happy.

"One of these days, we need to get together with this girl's family sometime. I'd like to meet them," Carol stayed more focused on the road. K.O. tried not mentioning that they'd met over a hundred times by now with how often they had fought with Boxmore.

* * *

When they arrived at Lakewood Plaza, the mother and son bid each other bye-bye before they headed to their separate places of work. K.O. entered the bodega, and saw Enid relaxing behind the front counter.

"Enid! I'm glad you're back!" the level 3 hero ran up eagerly to the level 4 ninja with a bright smile, happy to see his friend back.

"Oh hey, K.O.! You look more upbeat than usual today," Enid greeted her short friend warmly. The day off restored her patience for customers.

"I had a great night! Your advice the other day really helped," K.O. exclaimed. His co-worker smirked.

"That's great K.O.! You talked with them?" Enid leaned over the counter to hear how things went.

"We went on a date at a hunting party! It was great," he declared. His close friend was surprised though. K.O. just went on a date with this person who had been bullying him for long.

" _Wow…_ You really work quick," Enid murmured, not sure why she wished making friends out of enemies was this easy for her. "Well that's great, K.O.! Congrats on…" the alarm suddenly blared. The plaza was under attack already."…ugggh! Alright, let's get this Boxmore beat-down over with and then you can tell me all about it."

"Alright!" K.O. agreed. The two rushed outside to meet up with Radicles. They were starting to get a little irritated at these constant attacks so early in the day, but at least it meant getting them out of the way quickly.

* * *

When they got outside, they found Rad already there waiting for them. The familiar large box was there, and the sides fell off, revealing Shannon, Darrell and Raymond. However, only Darrell seemed eager to battle. The other two weren't.

"You guys are early today," Radicles stated. K.O. gave a light wave to Shannon. She sheepishly gave a small wave back. Neither side noticed their actions.

"Daddy's orders," Darrell simply retorted. Raymond and Shannon though just wanted to get this over with. The red bot was confused by this. The lack of spirit was killing the mood to him.

"Right we'll do it different than last time," Enid cracked her neck. Now that they knew how to deal with the Boxmore bot's upgrades, they would have no problems dealing with them. The level 4 hero hoped so.

"Here we go!" Rad wasted no time firing a beam from his finger at them, only for Darrell to block it aside with his psychic proof armor. The groups split up to fight their respective opponents in mere moments.

K.O. ended up dodging a bladed saw thrown at him by Shannon. He gulped. This was a lot more awkward than he thought it would be; having to fight the same person he was dating. Yet the orange robot didn't seem to have a scrap of trouble with bringing herself to attack him.

Shannon swung both of her saw blades downwards, whirling at high velocity. K.O. lit up two aura fists, catching both saw blades and keeping them in pace.

" _Sorry! Just trying to make things look as normal as I can_ ," Shannon apologized quietly. The young boy could not blame her for trying to do her best at least. Something was on her mind though, and he could tell.

"What's the matter?" the Level 3 hero requested her to share her woes with him. She had no trouble doing it last night during their date and afterwards. No real reason not to do so today, as long as the pretend struggle continued.

" _Well…_ " the orange Boxmore bot paused momentarily. She hesitated, but she guessed her technical boyfriend was just the right person to go for help. "I need to talk to Rad… _I-_ I have to apologize for something…" Shannon confessed. The brush haired boy did not really know what to think about that. He looked over to their friend while he was fighting Darrell. He soon had an idea.

 _"I know what to do! Call for help to get them to attack me,_ " K.O. told the orange robot. She seemed quick to catch onto his idea. She hoped it would at least work.

"Darrell! Raymond! Need a little help here!" Shannon cried out suddenly, making it look like K.O. was about to break her robotic limbs off in an attempt to get her buzz saws away from him. Sure enough, that did get her brothers attentions all too easily.

"You got it, Shannon!" Darrell quickly fired a pair of plasma balls her way after avoiding a large rock swung at him by Rad.

"Gladly!" Raymond agreed, dodging another pair of flame kicks from Enid before firing an explosive baseball his palm. Both attacks darted right for the teenage hero.

"Whoa!" K.O. spun around. Both aura knuckles were ready. He whacked the pair of attacks away, and they went flying towards the oblivious Rad.

"Rad, watch out!" the Level 3 hero called out.

" **Wha?!** Oh, blorp!" the stockroom worker got hit by both plasma blasts and the explosive baseball. The combined attack caused him to blast off into the air, and to the back of the plaza.

"Rad!" Enid called out. Darrell and Raymond grinned at the sound of the alien's distant scream. During the distraction, Shannon snuck away, and no one but K.O. noticed.

 _"I sure hope Rad didn't do anything to make her mad,"_ K.O. exhaled in relief at his plan working. With that done, he ran off to help Enid in the two versus two this battle had become.

* * *

Rad lay back first on a table where various workers were meant to go for lunch, having had quite the rough landing. The stockroom worker got up, holding his back in pain. "Jeez…! K.O. really has bad aim…" the Level 3 hero murmured, trying to get his bearings back so he could return to the battle.

"Hey, Rad…" he heard Shannon's sheepish voice chime up. he spun on his feet, getting ready to fight, assuming she had come after him after he got blasted away.

"Don't think just because I got unlucky that I'll be easy to beat!" Rad picked up a table with his telekinetic beam and threw it at the Boxmore bot. Shannon cut it in half with her blades, the parts harmlessly hitting the ground.

"Will you chill for one second?! I'm not trying to fight! I wanted to talk to you, alone… Sorry about the rough way of doing it. I asked K.O. for help while we were fighting," the orange robot explained. She felt genuinely bad about it, but she couldn't find any other option.

Rad raised an eyebrow. This was totally out of left field to him. And from Shannon, of all people? "What do you want to talk about?"

Shannon gulped. The nervousness of opening this old wound hit her. **_"I want to talk about… about when we were together."_**


	12. Apology

"About ** _us…?_** " Rad could not really believe what he was hearing from Shannon. After the long time it had been since they were together, things were feeling like they were back to normal. The young alien had been keeping those memories in the very back of his mind, yet she acted like she had no recollection of it until now. "Why? Just to torture me?" Radicles wondered aloud. If this was some type of Boxmore plan, he was going to not hold back. It would just make him even more berserk.

" _N-_ no! I didn't remember anything until I dragged it out of Raymond. My memories got erased when I reset myself…" Shannon defensively stated. She was hurt that he would even assume that much, but she guessed she could not blame him, given how crazy Boxman's schemes had been recently.

After a moment the Level three hero relaxed since she seemed to be genuine with her emotions. "Fine… I'll hear you out," he reluctantly agreed, letting the orange Boxmore bot step closer to him, but the Level 3 hero kept his guard up.

" _I…_ I want to apologize for messing with your heart like that when I was malfunctioning. I hate that I can't remember it though… even if it wouldn't have worked out no memories deserve to be completely erased," Shannon exclaimed. She could not remember, yet she knew he had been suffering with the memories weighing his heart down ever since, and knowing that made her feel all the guiltier.

Rad saw her becoming gradually more upset during her talk. This was enough proof for him that there was nothing shady going on here. " _It's_ … It's fine Shannon," Rad finally chimed up. "Honestly, it might not've work out anyway… plus I was in love with a fake you, right?"

"It was…" Shannon nodded. Emotions were a nightmare on their own. Malfunctioning emotions on the other hand were far beyond worse.

"Thanks for coming to apologize to me about it. You really didn't have to… But I really couldn't stand not knowing how we'd actually do together…" Rad had this thought plaguing his mind for the longest time. He wondered if this was a chance to really see how they'd do as a couple.

"I'm sorry, Rad… I really do want to give you another chance, but I have a new boyfriend," Shannon apologized. The teenage alien at first assumed she was merely brushing him off with a lie to be nice. But he could tell from her behavior. She was being honest from start to finish about everything.

" _O-_ oh alright… That's great, really," the Level 3 hero stuttered. Things went back to being awkward quite fast. The young Boxmore girl decided that it would be best for the topic to end here.

"Let's get back to the battle. Gotta impress daddy," Shannon laughed a little. She made to turn around.

"Hey, just one more thing?" Rad stopped her on her tracks, "I owe ya for apologizing to me… so… I'll let you beat me in this fight."

Shannon could not believe what she was hearing. "You don't mind taking a fall like that?" she questioned. If she could actually beat one of the Lakewood workers on her own, she would impress Boxman to no end.

"Just bang me up a bit. I'm good at acting tired," Rad insisted.

Shannon hesitated for a moment before retracting her hands into her arms to let the buzzsaws pop out, they began to whir at a fast rate. " _You heroes are starting to make me soft…_ " Shannon murmured. She charged right for Rad. The alien stood there, ready to let her do as she pleased to make it look authentic.

* * *

After a short time, K.O. and Enid had been able to beat the Boxmore bots. The two were exhausted, but happy that they were able to handle their enemies' upgrade with ease now.

"You alright, K.O.?" Enid asked her close friend. She noted how exhausted he had become from dealing with Raymond's shock absorbent armor.

"Yeah… I just hope Rad's alright," K.O. answered. He felt bad that he had to hurt one of his best friends like that, but he wanted to help his new girlfriend however he could. The two heroes began to head toward the direction they saw Rad get launched towards.

"Rad!" Enid and K.O. called out for him, looking around for the stockroom worker. There was no sign of Shannon, which made him even more worried.

Rad's exhausted and pained voice could be heard. The two ran over to where they heard his voice come from, and they found the young alien lying near the delivery bay, cut and bruised all over.

"Jeez, Rad. You had a rough landing," the Level 4 ninja commented. She had seen their co-worker fall from orbit-high heights and not look this bad.

" _No…_ Shannon came after me and got me pretty good," the young alien exclaimed, making it out to be that he had lost only because of being dizzy due to the blast and fall subsequently. The cashier helped him to his feet.

"I-I'm sorry, Rad, I didn't mean to get you hurt!" K.O. apologized profusely. He wondered if that talk Shannon wanted to have with Rad had ended poorly or if he had refused to talk with her and caused this beatdown.

"Not your fault, li'l buddy… you can't win them all, right?" Rad chuckled, taking his loss rather well. The three went on inside. They saw no signs of Shannon around, taking it as that they won most of the battle against the Boxmore bots.

* * *

A good bit of time was spent treating Rad's injuries. K.O. just felt bad for getting his friend hurt like he did.

"Well since the interruption's over, why don't we continue with the talk from earlier," Enid offered their young friend, to break the silence.

"Oh, yeah!" K.O. nodded. Rad just stayed quiet, not really focusing on much right now. He was contemplating why he was having mixed feelings about his interaction with Shannon earlier.

"So does the girl you're dating come to the plaza often?" Enid asked, continuing to bandage up a larger cut on the Level 3 alien's forearm.

" _Uhh…_ Yeah… as much as we do," K.O. honestly answered, recalling Shannon's preference to keep their relationship secret for the time being.

"Wait, you got a girlfriend now?" Rad was surprised to hear this.

"Yeah! She's really nice and sweeter than she acts," K.O. claimed. But he tried to think on the matter, not wanting to end up revealing the truth of who his date was. He felt Radicles pat his back.

"Way to go, little buddy," he congratulated the cleaner. He was glad somebody was at least having good luck in the romance department. The embarrassed K.O. felt a blush on his face.

"What's her name anyway?" Enid put away the first aid kit.

K.O. ended up getting worried now. He didn't think to make up a lie for his new girlfriend's name to keep Shannon safe. He tried to scramble for a name in his head. "Sh…Sherry! Yeah, her name's Sherry," K.O. finally had a good cover name come to mind. However, his co-workers did not really recall anyone named Sherry ever showing up at the plaza before. Though Enid knew their young friend described her as less like a hero and more like a bully, she thought little of it.

* * *

Raymond and Darrell were back at Boxmore industries and loaded into new bodies after their last ones had been broken apart from the battle.

"Darn it… They overwhelmed my shock absorbing armor," Raymond grumbled, frustrated. Their upgrades lost their worth so fast.

"They jammed my arm cannon and I wound up blowing up on accident," Darrell sounded irritated. He was used to his weapons being sabotaged, but having it be actively used against him was more frustrating. They both noticed no sign of their sister around.

"We better go tell Daddy what happened," the red robot insisted, assuming their sister would catch up. They had to go let their father know that the upgrades were now nothing more than a minor inconvenience to the heroes. He would be mad for sure.

* * *

They headed into Boxman's office, after noting that nothing important was happening inside for now from the sounds of it.

"Sorry father, but we were beaten… oh?" Raymond saw Shannon and Jethro nearby with their father sat behind in his desk. There was one proud look on their boss of a fathers face.

"I was just about to request you two to come," Boxman greeted his sons. His cheeriness made them anxious. Shannon looked sheepish, yet cheerful herself.

"I am Jethro," Jethro stated. The other bots were confused.

"It seems despite lacking the upgrades, Shannon has been able to defeat one of those heroes on her own," Boxman explained. Now he doubted his decisions on who he assigned upgrades to now.

"That's great, Shannon! Fantastic job!" Raymond smiled.

"Yeah! You must've done great if you didn't even need many repairs!" Darrell added.

"We-well, he was really out of it after K.O. accidentally blew him up," Shannon giggled nervously. She was feeling golden right now. For the last couple of minutes their father had been talking about how proud he was of her and all the hard work she had been doing, with praises upon praises to follow.

" _I guess daddy's been reading that positive reinforcement book we got him for Christmas… two years ago,_ " Darrell whispered to his younger brother. As far as they knew, that book had just been a balancer for their dad's desk since he received it.

"Darrell, Raymond, you two are going through training again to make sure you're using your full abilities. I still need to talk to your sister alone," Boxman ordered. The two bots felt immensely annoyed. Training was meticulous and boring. But they nodded. All three left without further word, simply glad their sister was happy once more and not wanting to spoil her first victory in a while.

Shannon was so grateful for K.O.'s help. She wouldn't have gotten to talk to Rad if it hadn't been for her new boyfriend after all. Maybe, she thought to herself… maybe she should give them both presents she pondered.


	13. Heart Break

It had been a week since the last attack on the plaza. Since Shannon defeated Rad, Boxmore had been relaxed, though everyone who knew that business was aware that would not last long.

K.O. was enjoying his lunch while sat on a bench. Things felt awkward from not having any attacks recently, but the bodega employees were enjoying their half down time.

"Good evening, K.O.," he heard a familiar voice from behind him. He hopped up seeing a familiar kappa, Dendy, up and about, perfectly hanging her advanced backpack on her shoulders.

"Dendy? Hey! Glad to see you're better!" K.O. exclaimed, hopping over the bench, excited to see his close friend again. She had been sick for the last two weeks, and she had not been around the plaza recently as result. Yet, he'd forgotten the talk with T.K.O. about her a while back.

"Indeed! I am back to 100% strength and health. How have things been?" Dendy happily replied. Even if she didn't show much emotion, she cared a lot about the Level 3 hero, more than others thought. Despite their drastically different IQs and personalities, they got along pretty perfectly.

"Things are going great! Boxmore's laying off with their attacks lately. Rad's a bit down though," the young hero exclaimed. He and Enid weren't sure what was wrong with Rad, but they presumed it was because of how he lost the battle a week prior.

"I'm pleased to hear it, perhaps they've learned a lesson… or didn't and are preparing for a large-scale assault," Dendy replied. K.O. wouldn't be surprised by the last option, they would worry about that when and if it happened. With how cheap Boxman could be, they would find an easy workaround.

"I guess, but since things have been so calm lately, mom thought it'd be a good chance to meet my girlfriend, so I'm going to ask her to dinner at my place tonight," K.O. tried to focus more on a positive side of their lives, not shy to announce the new significant other in his life.

"Ah, I see. I hope that goes well with your… _uh,_ hang on, I think my hearing is still recovering from the disease," the kappa hero awkwardly paused. Girlfriend, K.O. said? Was he serious? "Correct me if I am wrong, but did you just say girlfriend?"

"Yeah!" K.O nodded, "We've been dating for about two weeks now. She acts mean, but she's really sweet," his wording made it clear. K.O. was taken.

" _Oh…_ " she muttered. Deep down though, she was disappointed. She really hoped to win his heart, but it seemed too late now. Her heart felt torn in half. "Congratulations K.O…" she forced the words out of her mouth

K.O. wondered why her demeanor seemed to just plummet down in seconds. He felt his head throb in slight pain, like someone had hit him on the back of his skull from inside his own head.

 _ **"Jeez, and I thought I was supposed to be the bad half,"**_ T.K.O. chimed up in his other half's head.

"What are you talking abou… _oh…_ " K.O. quickly had his memory refreshed. He was surprised. Dendy truly had feelings for him all this time. He thought she saw him as nothing more than another fellow pow card collector and interesting person to study. It seemed he was wrong. "Uh, Dendy, are you okay?" K.O. felt terrible now. He just had to casually announce his relationship status, citing it about as subtle as a Boxmore attack. Showing how joyous his girlfriend made him did not help the news at all.

"I must take my leave for now… Apologies," Dendy turned on her heels and walked away. K.O. wanted to follow her to try and comfort her, but right now, he presumed he would just hurt her more than he just did.

"I didn't think you were right, T.K.O. Ah, jeez," the Level 3 hero held his head in shame, wondering if he had to go to Enid for more advice, since her last guidance for him worked out so well.

 _ **"I warned you, and you wouldn't listen. How can you have such a hard head, yet such a tiny brain?"**_ T.K.O. groaned, still flabbergasted by his other half's lack of perception.

"I'll try to talk to Dendy about it later. Right now I need to go call Shannon," K.O. claimed ignoring his other sides scolding and staying focused on his plans for today.

* * *

Shannon couldn't believe her sales shot up so much over a week. Everything felt way better to her, and her depression seemed like nothing more than a distant memory. She was sharpening her sawblades, as a few pieces of paper lay beside her, showing sales reports of how many of her models were sold in under a week. Her models' sales had tripled.

"You've really sold up a storm recently," Raymond chimed up from nearby, just relaxing with an oil can in his hand, occasionally sipping from it.

"I know. I didn't think it'd ever happen," replied Shannon.

"That's what happens when you beat a hero," laughed Raymond. Boxman's children were enjoying the peace from not fighting constantly as much as the bodega workers were. Their father was busy with a personal project and filling out all the new orders.

Shannon heard her phone ring. She took out. It was K.O. calling her. They had been mostly texting back and forth for a while, this was the first actual call. "I'm gonna take this call," she said.

"Okay," the sports loving robot nodded. He just knew it was this new boyfriend of hers calling, but he tried not to let his irritation known, since everything seemed perfectly fine so far.

* * *

Once Shannon was outside of the room, she answered the call. "Hey, K.O. I didn't think you'd be the first to call," she commented everyone was so busy that nobody was around so she could be more relaxed in the halls at the very least

"Heh! Hey, Shannon is this a good time?" K.O. laughed lightly. He chilled in the food court away from many of the people there, away from work under the excuse of it being a lunch break.

"Yeah, what's up?" the orange bot gladly responded.

" _W-_ well… y'see, my mom really wants to meet the person I'm dating, and I told her I'd ask you to dinner at our place tonight," K.O. explained. Keeping things secret without introducing his supposed date would make others far more suspicious. The level 3 hero had no logical reason to be hiding his significant other after all.

"You want me meet your family already? This is really sudden, isn't it?" Shannon replied. She thought it would happen later into their relationship, at least a couple more weeks.

"Well… I see a lot of my friends as family, but this is just my mom. I thought you'd like being able to get away from your family for dinner, at least," K.O. explained, thinking it would not be hard for him to introduce his girlfriend to his mother, especially with the disguise-o-matic on their side.

Shannon had to pause. She wanted to ask about her boyfriend's father, but she doubted it was a safe topic to discuss. She breathed out a sigh as she guessed they had to do it sometime. She just hoped she did not need to introduce K.O. to her family anytime soon. "Alright K.O. I'll do it. Just text me your address."

"Really? Thanks, Shannon! Love ya!" K.O. thanked her, sounding ecstatic knowing she agreed.

"Love ya too," she cooed before hanging up. The female robot didn't understand why whenever they ended a date or met up and went their separate ways, they began to say that to each other instead of goodbye. It made Shannon feel warm inside.

"Shannon?" that familiar whiny voice startled her. She turned around to see Darrell standing there, looking very confused.

"I knew I should've got my awareness sensors calibrated last night…" Shannon muttered under her breath, regretting procrastinating immensely now. " _H-_ hey, Darrell. I didn't notice you there," she spoke to her brother, doubting tearing his body into pieces would do any good now.

"Who were you talking to?" the one eyed robot questioned. Shannon never talked like that to anybody. Not even their own father.

Shannon began to mentally scramble. She felt scared. Lying was not going to get her out of this. She decided to build up her courage to say the truth. "I was… talking to my boyfriend. I'm going to meet his family tonight."

Darrel was surprised. Pieces began to get put together quickly in his head. Maybe, he believed, that was why Raymond seemed so irritated or unsettled recently. "Is your emotional circuit malfunctioning?" he asked.

Shannon felt offended. "What? You're saying I can't have a boyfriend unless I'm malfunctioning?"

"Wha? No, I meant…" Darrel put his hands up defensively as he felt his back against the wall.

"I'm completely functional! And happy, too!" Shannon accused, "Now I'm getting ready for tonight, and if I so much as see a sign of you near us, I'll tear you apart!"

"S-sorry, Shannon, I get it, I get it!" Darrell pleaded. His words were enough to make her back off before heading off in a huff. He never saw Shannon like this before in his life. The cyclops robot turned away from his sister, thinking that he needed to talk to Raymond and Jethro about this.


	14. Dinner

K.O. set the table in the kitchen, and Carol, eager to be meeting her son's girlfriend, worked on dinner. She had been worried that something might have gone wrong.

"Anything I should know about this Sherry girl?" Carol asked for the details, wanting to know if there were any sore subjects to not dig up.

"She's acts aggressive, but is really sweet once you get past that," K.O. stated, not thinking of much beyond that. He was anxious for how dinner would go. He just hoped that it would be smooth and simple with nothing beyond occasional questions and idle dinner talk.

The doorbell soon rang. K.O. felt his anxiety increase dramatically, aware how badly Shannon wanted to keep the relationship partially secret. "I-I guess that's her! I'll go get it!" he instantly darted off and opened the door. What he saw though shocked him.

" _Shannon?_ " K.O. chirped. She seemed to have gotten an upgrade to her disguise from the other day. The light pink hair covering her head that no longer had the mushroom shape to the top of it. A white shirt and orange jeans completed the disguise.

"Tonight its Sherry, remember?" Shannon giggled and planted a quick kiss on his cheek. K.O. knew she was going to disguise herself, but he did not expect her to go through that much effort. He had texted her all the information with the lies he had told about her to his family and friends, and she memorized them well.

"Are you sure you'll be alright? Moms cooked regular food…" K.O. asked, not wanting her to hurt herself.

"Don't worry. Daddy made sure we're able to convert any material into fuel. Metals just the easiest to process for us," Shannon reassured. She was not used to having people care about her like this. The Level 3 hero nodded, taking his hand into hers before and leading her into his house.

"Is this the lucky girl peanut?" Carol asked her son. K.O. gave a bright smile, but he was not doing a good job at hiding his nervousness at all.

"Ye-yeah, mom, this is Sherry," the Level 3 hero introduced them. Shannon was unsure why, she should be nervous to the core, but right now the former point member made her feel nothing but reassured.

"It's nice to meet you," Shannon tried to be polite with her modified voice, though the handshake they exchanged she swore nearly crushed her hand. She was now feeling nervous unable to tell if her boyfriend's mother was irritated or simply overly enthusiastic.

"Nice to meet ya too! I'm Carol," Carol gladly introduced herself in trade as the handshake ended. The high level hero sure didn't get the vibe of her being a bully at all, but guessed that the relationship had possibly changed that for good. "Come on, dinner's ready. I bet you're starving from the trip."

Shannon happily nodded, following K.O. and his mother into the dining room. The female Boxmore bot could see the nervous look on her boyfriend's face. This was the first time she had ever seen him like this, and she understood why.

* * *

Things did seem to be off to a good start. They talked back and forth about the first lies the young girl could fabricate, about her family, and about her and K.O.'s meeting. Though she did slip out of her tongue that the hunting party going awry was how they hooked up.

"Excuse me for a second," K.O. hopped off to go to the bathroom. He just hoped they would be fine while he was away for the few minutes. The quiet atmosphere became awkwardly tense for Shannon, who had already finished her food. She did her best to stay calm.

"So, Shannon… How'd you wind up with my boy?" asked Carol. Shannon felt her circuits nearly explode from the shock of this sudden query.

" _Wh-_ what? Who's Shan-Shannon?" Shannon tried to play it off to the best of her ability, though now she was plain terrified. How did she get found out so easily?

"You're Shannon, right?" the dojo owner's face hosted an expression of bemused content, wondering if the villain was going to try and play it off this badly, when the panic alone was a dead enough giveaway.

" _Ho_ …How'd you know?" Shannon gave in, not wanting to make things worse than they already were. She pulled out the Disguise-o-matic, wondering if it had malfunctioned.

"I figured it out from how you move," Carol simply answered.

" _How I move…?_ " Shannon parroted, further confused. The shock and worry overwhelming her was partially disabling her speech abilities.

"You move lightly, each step with forced grace. Looks a lot better when ya fight though," Carol chuckled, remembering those movements from all their battles made identifying her a lot easier.

Shannon buried her face into her hands. "I was so focused on appearances that I didn't even pay attention to my behavior…" she groaned. Her own subconscious movements had blown her undercover identity. " _Wh…_ What are you going to do…?" she barely looked up from her hands. She was expecting to be bashed out through the ceiling any second now.

"Let me ask… How do you feel about K.O.?" asked Carol, not showing any hostility so far.

"K.O. is…" Shannon paused briefly, trying to calm herself, letting her barely gathering thoughts about him spring up, "He's the sweetest person I've ever met. Nobody has treated me like he has. I was more miserable than ever until we went on that date… He's so brave, and so determined, it's almost like he can make any bad situation a good one… A-are you going to beat me up…?"

"What for?" Carol smirked as she slid her empty plate aside. She enjoyed that sheepish behavior.

"I'm one of Boxman's children. A robot… a villain… always sent to fight K.O. For whatever dumb reason my dad can think up," Shannon rambled on for a bit. She had been worried that whoever found her out, if they did, would assume this was some evil scheme to ruin the young hero emotionally.

"So? I've seen weirder… When you've worked for point, you kinda learn that social statuses and tags are nearly meaningless," Carol responded. Good and evil were the last things on her mind. "That and I would see somebody having bad intentions with my baby a mile away, and go out of my way to give them what for… Really though, I see you have none."

Shannon's eyes welled with joy. "So… you're fine with me dating K.O.?"

"My baby's old enough to manage his own love life. I'll let him handle it," Carol got up, intending to start cleaning the dishes, but before she could, she felt both of Shannon's arms tightly wrap around her, catching her off guard.

"Thank you…" Shannon sobbed happily. Carol patted her back. She hated to imagine how starved for affection Shannon was before she met her son, it at least made her feel all the more confident in leaving K.O. to her.

"Is everything alright?" K.O. chirped up. He had just returned to see Shannon so emotional.

"Yeah, peanut. Just having a bit of a talk," Carol grinned, letting Shannon return to her seat. K.O. wanted to question what exactly they talked about, but he decided it would best be left untouched for now.

* * *

The Boxmore Headquarters factory had been running at full force today with little rest. Nothing unusual for when sales were up. Raymond had taken the chance to take a break after he nearly had a limb ripped off by some of the machinery by accident, again. Nothing unusual. As he lounged around in the empty break room. Raymond soon heard the door open. He winced, expecting to hear his father shouting at him to prepare an attack or to get back to work. He was relieved to instead see Darrell.

"Oh hey, Darrell. You on break too?" asked Raymond. Darrell nodded. He had been searching for his little brother a good while now.

"Yeah, _but…_ " Darrell paused. He looked worried. "I also wanted to talk to you about Shannon."

"What's wrong?" Raymond returned to his seat, though he had a bad feeling that he already knew what this conversation was about.

"It's Shannon…" Darrell sat down, "The other day, I caught her talking on the phone to someone, and it turned out to be her boyfriend," he paused, letting that first piece of news sink in, "When I asked if her emotional circuit was alright, she blew up on me and threatened to tear me apart. I have no clue what to do."

"I already knew that," Raymond was not shocked one bit, "Her mysterious boyfriend just cured her depression and gave her the motivation she needed to do better in combat."

"Ah…" Darrell sighed, guessing he should not be surprised that Raymond already knew. "What do we do?" he asked. He was in inner turmoil about telling their father about this or not, especially given the incident with Rad a while back.

"Nothing. As long as she's happy, I'm happy," Raymond stated, simple as that, trying not to remember the threat that Shannon also made to him.

"But you aren't curious to know who it is?" Darrell asked, looking annoyed at their lack of options here.

"I am Jethro," they heard suddenly, seeing the familiar blue short robot there.

"What do you mean you know who it is?" Darrell gawked, wondering why Jethro of all people knew but not them.

"Please tell us," Raymond requested without hesitation.

Jethro took a while to consider letting the two know, and he nodded to it. _**"I am Jethro,"**_ he booped.


	15. Found Out

K.O. followed Shannon outside. It was getting late and she insisted she had to get home, despite how much fun they had been having during her stay. The young couple stood on the sidewalk by the yard, stopping shortly.

" _So…_ what'd you think of tonight?" K.O. asked, holding her hand in his with a nervous smile, hoping his mom had not caused any trouble while he was gone. The Level 3 hero saw a quip grace her face, looking pretty reassured.

"I think it went about as good as it could. Your mom is nice," Shannon replied, picking up on how worried he was about first impressions, even if this technically wasn't their first. The Boxmore bot decided against letting her boyfriend know about Carol giving her blessings to their relationship, since it would probably cause more confusion than it was worth.

"Really? I'm glad… My mom can be scary at times," K.O. said, feeling relieved to at least know intimidation had not been a problem tonight.

"I hope I can meet your family one day… outside of a battle," the young hero stated, feeling the crimson creeping up his face while she held his hand.

"We'll figure something out, but a hero shouldn't overwork themselves, right?" Shannon reassured that they would handle it, one day, but not anytime soon. She hoped. Though as they talked, she could tell there was a small sense of guilt radiating from her boyfriend. "Is everything alright? You've been distracted a lot," Shannon took a seat on the grass, letting him sit beside her on the soft ground. He let a sigh escape his lips. That voice in his head would never let him live down the guilt in his heart.

" _I-_ I think I hurt my friend really bad today. I was so excited about having you over for dinner tonight, I told her on accident, _a-_ and…" K.O. hid his face in his hands. He was guilty for hurting Dendy. He was unsure if it was ignoring her affection for him all this time or just for blatantly announcing he had a girlfriend in such a rude manner that did it, but both combined caused enough guilt to make him feel as if he deserved a level down for it.

"You're not the only one who had to break a heart recently, K.O.," Shannon rubbed her hand on his back, trying to comfort him. She still couldn't decide if she was happier without having the memories of hers and Rad's relationship anymore, but it upset her worse that she couldn't remember it.

"That's what you wanted to talk to Rad about…?" K.O. asked, rather meekly.

" _Yeah…_ " Shannon turned her gaze up to the sky. Stars were starting to shine. "He wanted another shot at a relationship when I was apologizing for that mess. Ever since Raymond told me about it, I've been wondering what my life could have become," Shannon confessed. The young villain might not know every last detail. But knowing at one point she had been planning on running away to live a new life with Rad, she wondered what that life would have been like, even if it was just a love built upon a malfunction.

" _O-_ oh, I don't mean that I'm disappointed with you though! I meant…" Shannon stammered. K.O. began to snicker. It was kind of amusing seeing her in her panicked scramble to not be insulting accidentally. Most boys wouldn't enjoy hearing their girlfriend talk about their ex like that, but the young hero didn't mind and understood perfectly.

"Don't worry. I wondered about stuff with Dendy too, _but…_ I feel like there's nothing there," K.O. sighed, not able to put it any other way. He knew T.K.O. felt opposite to that. Despite them having opposite opinions, it still left the young hero pondering, and he rarely ever thought that far ahead in his life.

Silence fell upon them for a moment. The two for some reason seemed to connect their emotions together. They may have worried about bringing up their inner thoughts, but nevertheless, they appreciated each other's honesty. They both felt much more comfortable.

"Well, I better get home… I'll see you tomorrow for the morning attack," Shannon stood up, helping her boyfriend to his feet as well.

"Yeah! Don't worry I won't hold back," K.O. nodded enthusiastically. His girlfriend exchanged one last passionate kiss with him afterwards. The brush haired boy stood there in delight, watching as Shannon walked away. He only hoped she did not need him to blow up a friend again.

K.O. began to make his way back up toward his home, but then he felt his head throb again.

" _ **Ow…!**_ T.K.O., stop that! I know you're doing that on purpose!" the Level 3 hero spoke aloud, not even trying to brush the pain off this time.

 ** _"Well, what else do you want me to do?"_** T.K.O. shot back at his mind, _**"All I can do is beat up my punching bag in here every time I see you two together!"**_

"I want you to just be happy for me… _for us…_ " K.O. cast his gaze downward, sounding far worse than just annoyed at this point. His bad side was just making matters worse with their arguments. "My life as a hero'll just get harder eventually. If I can have someone like Shannon to make it more bearable, it'll be a million times better," the Level 3 hero mused. He had his ups and downs at the bodega since he first became a hero, and inevitably, there would come a longer chain of hardships in the future, he knew that much.

K.O. just went inside, not wanting to dwell on the annoyances of the night. All he wished to remember was that it as a great time where Shannon got to meet his family.

* * *

But lo, what K.O. had no idea about, or what he could even feel, was that he had a device stuck to the inside of one of his wristbands. Someone had been listening in on him for an unprecedented amount of time.

" _…I gave you that item so you could feel safe knowing someone would be able to find you no matter what…_ " Dendy murmured. She sat on her chair within her lab, resting the headphones down. Even though she tried to ignore it, her heart ached. She barely noticed as well that tears welled in her eyes from the entire time she had been eavesdropping.

"I guess you forgot about it," the young kappa held her head as she talked to nobody but thin air. It was so strange though. She began feeling an unwarranted sense of insanity creeping in on the folds of her mind. Yet she did her best to always fight it off. Most scientists became a cliché due to their experiments like that, as far as she cared.

Why did it have to be Shannon anyway? That question ran through Dendy's head at least a hundred times since she first overheard her name. Nothing about it made any sense to her. Shannon had become K.O.'s girlfriend. Of all the people in town, he chose a villain over her. That was what hurt her much more.

Although her mind began to clear, a thought came to mind. A devious quip appeared across her face. Her goggles practically shimmered in enthusiastic joy. It was not too late to put an end to this travesty.

"Their falsehood of a relationship shall be easy enough to stop. I just have to simply inform Rad, Enid and his mother about this," Dendy started typing away on her computer. "Then, once K.O.'s emotionally stable after they force it to end, I'll not hesitate to make my feelings known to him, while comforting him."

The young kappa soon finished the plan she had laid out. What really disturbed her however was that she had no reservations about doing it. No sense of guilt or hesitation that she would have. She knew she was going to hurt K.O., but as long as his affections were diverted to a villain, that she was sure that common humanity would deem wrong, she wasn't going to sleep at night.

Dendy then downloaded the audio to her phone. " _Tomorrow…_ " she murmured, all the while the tears would not stop.

* * *

"Her boyfriend is… That pipsqueak of the plaza?" Raymond held his head. Already he regretted not getting nosy with his sister's love life. Jethro had shared the news to Raymond and Darrell two hours ago. The two had not taken it well at all. Jethro had long rolled away like nothing happened as usual, brushing things off with ease. Darrell and Raymond stood alone, still unable to wrap their heads around Shannon actually dating one of their own adversaries, and on her own accord. Both doing their best to leave out the 'again' part to this situation.

"I don't get it… Why would she date him? She isn't malfunctioning this time," Darrell pondered aloud. The news had actually shocked him so badly he wound up having to get loaded into another body.

"I don't know," Raymond seethed, "I just don't know what came over her when she thought any of this was a good idea!"

"What do we do? Talk to Daddy? To Shannon?" Darrell stammered. If Boxman found out, he was definitely going to lose it. "Raymond?" He squeaked, hoping for some input.

Raymond took that moment to think about it. But he soon did have an idea that just might work, or rather was all taht would come to mind. "Simple," he sternly spoke, "We'll talk to K.O."


	16. Anger

K.O. was cleaning up the bodega. Things had been slow today, not that any of the workers were complaining. No attacks, no problems. It became awkward to the three workers when a day didn't start with an assault on the bodega, that weird atmosphere only increased when there was a lack of customers.

"Hey K.O.?" Enid chirped, getting his attention while he swept. The ninja was idly relaxing since she heavily doubted things would remain calm for long.

"Yeah Enid?" K.O. asked. She sounded rather worried.

"Does Rad seem… _distracted_ , to you?" the Level 4 ninja asked. K.O. was confused, pondering on the question for a moment.

"Kinda," the Level 3 hero nodded. He felt that Rad was more depressed than distracted. K.O. felt bad, since he was usually always upbeat and cheerful, and his new girlfriend only added onto that. "I'll go talk to him," he volunteered. Enid shrugged, letting the youngest worker do as he pleased, since his optimism tended to brighten her mood, at least whenever she felt down.

K.O. approached Radicles. The stockroom worker was restocking some blasting gauntlets, mostly keeping to himself, until he saw the brush haired boy approach.

"Oh hey, little buddy, what's up?" Rad greeted him, grateful for the distraction. K.O. could sense the aura of him preferring to be alone right now, but that did not stop that happy smile on his face from appearing.

"Are you alright, Rad? You're acting like your van got stolen again," K.O. asked rather straight forwardly. The alien had been unlucky with several incidents happening to his prized van, all of which were Boxmore's doing, but each time it was like he had part of himself stolen.

"Yeah little buddy. Just been thinking a lot…" the Level 3 alien stated. Clearly he was hiding more than that.

"Is it something you wanna talk about?" K.O. offered. Rad was not the type to get so lost in thought like this. Whenever it happened, it was nothing short of bad news. The alien paused for a brief moment, but he chuckled, shaking his head.

"I can trust you with anything little buddy. It's just… The other day, I talked with Shannon," the young stockroom worker began. K.O. feigned surprise at hearing this. His girlfriend had already told him all about it last night. He just didn't want Rad to figure out that he knew already. "And I… pretended to lose." Rad declared.

Now that actually did genuinely surprise K.O. All those injuries they treated were not that bad. The dots all began connecting themselves from there. It made him relieved to know he had not caused bodily harm to his dear friend

"I owed her it, at least, since she went out of her way to say sorry to me… and I know you helped her with it," Rad gave a toothy grin. K.O. looked down, sheepishly guessing his naturally helpful nature gave that away.

"Sorry, Rad. She asked me to during our fight," K.O. confessed. He was bad at lying as he always was.

"It's cool, pal," his close friend rubbed his head.

"…You've been wondering what it'd be like if Raymond and Darrell hadn't ruined things, haven't you?" the Level 3 hero chirped, remembering Shannon expressing similar thoughts to him last night after dinner.

"You're getting good at reading people, little dude," Rad confessed, having to wonder if he was becoming easier to read, or if K.O. was simply getting smarter. All the same, he could not hold back the truth now. "Sometimes I still dream about what it would have been like. I was thinking I was over it, turned out I wasn't, so when she apologized to me, I was ready to give it a real shot, but she said she was already dating somebody new… I dunno who they are, and it's obvious they make her happy, so I let her go."

K.O. could see that feeling of sorrowful guilt in Rad's heart, expressed in his eyes, all for ignoring his emotions for so long. "Rad, I'm so sorry…" K.O. could only say, feeling his own guilt beginning to overwhelm him.

"It's fine, K.O. I can't be mad at whoever she's with, since, well, he's made her happier than I ever probably could have… I'm sure they're a great person," Rad exclaimed. The young bodega cleaner felt crimson creeping onto his face from the praise that Rad had just given him without knowing.

" _Well…_ I mean, that's great that you can move on," K.O. stammered, shaking off the blush.

"Yeah… Thanks for hearing me out, K.O. I feel a lot better," the Level 3 alien smirked.

"It's nothing," hummed K.O. in reply. However, they had no chance to get back to work, as the sound of an alarm blared.

" _ **The plaza is under attack!**_ " Mr. Gar's voice roared over the loudspeaker.

"Finally, some action," Enid hopped over the front counter and ran out the door. Her two friends followed shortly after, just as eager for a brawl as she was.

* * *

When they got outside, the usual large box from Boxmore was in the parking lot and falling apart, revealing only Raymond and Darrell. K.O. worried about where Shannon was, but the furious aura the robots gave them was far more terrifying.

"You guys are later than usual today," Enid stretched her legs, getting ready.

"You finally starting to realize you can never beat us?!" Rad laughed.

Then a baseball hit his stomach at a high velocity. Before he could recover, Darrell fired a full-powered plasma beam at him. By the time K.O. and Enid registered what happened, Rad was out, laying in a broken bodega window.

"Okay, no prefight banter! Let's go, K.O.!" the Level 4 ninja declared.

"Right Enid!" the Level 3 hero agreed, both of them dodging another blast of plasma, the two separating instantly to try and split apart their opponents. There was an unnerving silence coming from their enemies during this battle. This was no usual plaza attack.

K.O. ducked under the explosive baseball coming his way and jumped over a hockey puck that got hit toward him. He was able to get close enough to Raymond. K.O. let both aura knuckles charge up.

"Take this!" he unleashed a flurry of blow against the sports addicted robot. Each attack caused that upgraded armor to bend around, absorb and disrupt each impact individually. Upon realizing this, K.O. tried to attack faster, but it was not long before he was burnt out. " _Haah… haah…_ did you get more upgrades?" the young hero panted. That attack exhausted him, and now he was breaking into a nervous sweat.

Enid jumped high into the air above Raymond, her leg catching fire to start her flaming axe kick. "Take this!" Enid was about to collide with the Boxmore bot's head, but before she could, she got blasted with a strong burst of plasma, throwing her to the ground.

"Enid!" K.O. called out to his groaning friend. Enid couldn't regain her bearings on the situation. Raymond whacked her head with his hockey stick. Enid stumbled for half a moment before falling onto her side, unconscious. K.O. was terrified. Both of his friends were now out cold.

"We're not here for an attack. We're here for you," Darrell shattered the tense silence of the short battle, aiming his blaster at the boy.

 _"It's like their upgrades got even stronger…!"_ K.O. gulped, wondering what happened to cause this strength. His arms were tied up behind his back with rope that Raymond had brought before they began dragging him away, leaving Enid and Rad unconscious.

* * *

It seemed like the Boxmore baddies had gone out of their way to not let anybody see them bringing in K.O. They took him to a far back room within the facility and threw him against the wall.

"Are you guys malfunctioning or something…?" the Level 3 hero groaned wondering. They were so angry today that it made him anxious.

"No. We want to figure out how Shannon wound up dating you of all people," Raymond shot back. Everything he knew, about Shannon dating him, about how happy she was with him, made his circuits boil. And he himself was responsible for setting those wheels in motion. Raymond cursed his audacity to have told her such advice.

" _Wh…_ you guys found out?!" K.O. gasped, " _H-_ how did you guys find out?" he knew lying his way out of it was futile. They knew the undeniable truth.

"Now I'm starting to wonder if Shannon just has a thing for heroes," Darrell commented. First time a malfunction of her emotional circuits, now this. They were going to leave their father out of it. Whatever Boxman would do was far worse than anything his sons planned.

"I am Jethro," Jethro made his sudden entrance as he rolled into the room.

"Right… Guess dad does need an explanation for that unannounced attack," Raymond understood. He walked off to get the matter resolved so they could get back to the task at hand.

"Keep an eye on li'l Romeo, Jethro. Don't let him escape," Darrell ordered before following his younger brother out the door, leaving the two alone in the room.

"Hey, Jethro… can you tell me what happened?" K.O. questioned, he presumed Jethro knew from the start, since he had been there when the young hero initially asked Shannon about her feelings for him.

"I am Jethro," the blue robot booped.

K.O.'s jaw dropped. "You told them?!" he cried, "But why!"

"I am Jethro," Jethro simply responded.

" _To help us…?_ " the Level 3 hero frowned. This wasn't helpful in the slightest. He watched as the weakest Boxmore bot rolled up to him before opening up a small compartment on his chest.

"I am Jethro," Jethro repeated, letting a small USB driver fumble out to let K.O. have it. The young boy raised an eyebrow, not sure how any of this was helpful from Jethro, but it was too late to complain. He used his bound hands to grab the USB and hide it into his pocket. Shortly after, Jethro rolled away.

 _"What did he mean I'll know when the time to use it comes…?"_ K.O. mumbled to himself, more lost than anything. He only hoped Shannon was okay.


	17. For the better?

Enid was slightly shaken awake. The young ninja felt the worst headache of her life as she regained consciousness.

"Are you alright, Enid?" Dendy's voice chimed up. She had found them like this upon coming to the bodega to execute her own personal plan, things seemed to already be immensely derailed sadly.

" _Yeah…_ Boxmore just upped their game this attack," Enid held her sore skull, thankful the kappa had woke her back up, though it was obvious the battle had been long over. She saw a sore Radicles leaned against a wall nearby, already partially treated by Dendy.

"Where is K.O.?" Dendy asked. Enid took one glance around. No sign of anybody but themselves being there, whether or not she should be worried defaulted to yes quite fast.

"He must have gone after them…!" Enid tried to force herself to stand up again. She fumbled a bit and just wound up on one knee. Her sore head had exhausted her.

"I actually came to inform you of something about K.O. I discovered… and his girlfriend," the young kappa averted the two's attention to her. She presumed they had known about him being in a relationship already.

"What about her?" Rad asked, getting up. The beating he had gotten from the robots was nowhere near as bad as he and Enid expected, but it was enough to knock him out cold long enough.

"I discovered her identity _and…_ well, I caught them on recording by accident," Dendy tried to brush it off as a mere set of coincidence, playing innocent enough. She took her phone out, and after a moment, began playing the recording for them to hear.

Enid and Rad listened with wide eyes. They heard K.O. and Shannon's conversation the other night, about breaking hearts and hurting those inadvertently to long degrees. Enid couldn't process this. Rad just stared with his eyes, having connected things pretty quickly. He knew who K.O. was talking to.

" _Wait…_ You're telling me… K.O.'s girlfriend is **Shannon?** " Enid could not really believe that words that passed her lips.

"Affirmative," the young kappa nodded and put her phone away. The purple haired cashier guessed that both of the young couple had been keeping it secret. They thus understood the odd rage behind the assault today by Raymond and Darrell.

"No way…! This has to be a sick joke. Boxmore must be up to something. We gotta go save K.O.!" Enid immediately wanted to launch a counterattack, though became a little puzzled when she saw her co-worker pause. "Rad, come on! We're just wasting time!"

"R-right! Let's do this!" Radicles declared, thinking they would have to suffer through the pain to save their friend. Dendy watched as they left with a satisfied grin on her face.

"It seems my luck has improved drastically. Now all I have to do is wait for the right opportunity to strike," the kappa hummed, as she began to walk merrily away. She could hardly wait to get the next stage of her plan to steal K.O.'s heart underway.

* * *

After the meeting with their father, Darrell and Raymond had rounded up Shannon in their room for a sort of family meeting. Their sister felt nothing short of fear. They did not even have to say a word to know what had happened this time. It made her anxiety and fear grow paramount.

Raymond was seated nearby on a chair. Darrell was standing by the door to make sure no one came in. Shannon was on the edge of her bed staring down at the floor that all too familiar feeling of depression having sank in well beforehand.

"This morning, we attacked the bodega. We won that time," Raymond started.

" _T-_ that's good… Why didn't you tell me you were going to attack though?" Shannon voiced the question, though already knew the answer. She had to play along with where this conversation was going. Playing dumb would most likely dig her grave deeper.

"To kidnap your boyfriend," Darrell answered straightforwardly. The female Boxmore bot let out a sorrowful whimper.

"How did you wind up with K.O. of all people? I understand why you wanted to keep him secret from us, but this was something you simply had to know we'd find out eventually!" Raymond declared. He showed anger, confusion, disappointment, and hurt towards her, at the same time. Though he could not deny, he was frustrated with himself for insisting she keep at it when he had no clue of who her boyfriend was.

"I wasn't trying to keep it secret! We were trying to figure out a way to break the news. He even took me to dinner with his family, and they were okay with us being together," Shannon explained. She couldn't hold back to truth, but it'd take a long time to find the best way to tell the rest of her family about the relationship without this level of drama happening.

"It'll just end badly," Darrell stated, "A hero and a villain can never last in a relationship. How do you not know this?"

"Being a hero or a villain doesn't matter when a relationship starts!" argued Shannon. She remembered Carol's words well. "You two don't even care about how happy he's made me? He's shown more care for me in our two weeks of dating than you two have shown me in our whole lives!"

"That's not true!" Darrell shot back, though paused, "I-is it?!"

"It is! Say what you will about K.O., but he really has a heart of gold!… I don't even know if I'm good at being a villain," Shannon added solemnly. That thought had been bothering her forever, but she always just brushed it off as a minor doubt that any person, organic or inorganic, could have about their alignment to good or evil.

Her siblings paused for a moment. They both seemed to feel guilty for what they planned to do next.

"We'll make sure you feel better once we're done with you. We're doing this for you, Shannon," Raymond spoke.

Shannon could feel her anger boiling. She stood up, fully intent on tearing them apart. She tried to get her buzzsaws to appear. Yet nothing happened.

"What? Why aren't my weapon systems working?!" Shannon gasped. She couldn't transform either. It was like something malfunctioned.

"Sorry. We turned on your emergency staller during our meeting with daddy," Darrell explained. Each Boxmore bot brand model had stallers installed within them. In the event that something were to go horribly wrong, these devices could disable their weapons, or at worse occasions, shut them down fully.

"You won't remember a thing once we finish wiping your memory. We promise," said Raymond as he grabbed her, and so did Darrell.

* * *

K.O. lay in the dark room that he had been left in, worried about Shannon. He had faith in Jethro and this supposed plan of his, but tried to ignore the reality of how bad the situation was for them.

 ** _"I told you it'd all go wrong,"_** T.K.O. chimed up in his head, at least without causing a purposeful sting of pain.

"I knew relationships hit rough patches, but I didn't know they got this rough…!" K.O. responded, trying to struggle free of his bindings. "We need to make sure Shannon's alright! Help me out here, T.K.O.!" the Level 3 hero pleaded. They had a lot special abilities when their powers were combined. Even just their different styles of fighting helped in rough situations.

 ** _"Why? She's not my girlfriend,_** " T.K.O. questioned, seeing not a need to lift a finger.

"But she is my girlfriend!" K.O. countered as he struggled against the bindings again.

 _ **"And your point is?"**_ sneered T.K.O.

K.O. wound up falling onto his back after another failed struggling attempt. "You know what the most important part of any relationship is?"

" ** _Is this gonna be some cheesy stuff?"_** yawned his practical dark counterpart.

"It's about accepting the good and bad of each other," K.O. sounded exhausted from the constant struggling, "You are my bad side, right? So if she loves me, that means she cares about you just as much. She knew about you from start to finish. Don't you care about that, T.K.O.?"

There was a long silence from his bad side as T.K.O. processed this, like both a nerve and his emotions had been struck at the same time. _**"I was expecting something cheesier, but… yeah, I guess…"**_ he disconcertingly murmured.

"I hate to say this, but for the first time in my life, I want to go on a rampage. That's more your thing, though. I'll gladly let you do it as long as you make sure she's alright," K.O. offered. He considered combining into their other form. This whole issue needed him to go for a more destructive approach, since that was the route the Boxmore baddies were going.

 _"…Fine. I'll take over,"_ T.K.O. reluctantly agreed.

K.O. felt a weight off his chest just from hearing him accept and took a deep breath. His bad side soon took control. His hair became wildly messy, and his red wristbands became purple and spiky.

With one roar, he snapped out of the ropes. Clenching his dark purple aura knuckles, he stretched, grinning his sharp teeth, ready to let out all of their anger.

 _ **"You want a rampage? I'll give ya one then."**_


	18. Shattered Hopes

Enid and Rad had been running through Boxmore facilities with little resistance beyond a few of the usual robots, but they were none of the stronger ones. It felt off putting to them.

"It's like they're focused on something else entirely," Enid commented, punting another Jethro through the ceiling with one strong kick.

"Yeah… it's creepy…" Rad agreed, blasting apart a few more of the bots with a finger beam. They felt the building rumble. It was far from the first time, but they had not been able to find the source of the quakes, nor were they certain if they should be concerned about it.

"Just keep looking for K.O.," said Enid as they hurried along, thankful the robots had not been any real threat after the assault on the bodega earlier.

* * *

T.K.O. had begun his rampage throughout the factory, destroying each room he went into from the ground up with little hesitation or remorse.

"Not here either… Haven't even run into her brothers beyond Jethro," the reluctant hero rubbed his shoulder sorely. He couldn't complain though, as it meant he could rampage for far longer before having to return to his good half's mind.

 _"Maybe you should try **NOT** destroying rooms…"_ K.O. suggested, but doubted his twin would listen. They went to the next room, bashing another door off its hinges. They could see they were on a walkway above a storage area.

"I should've known it was you causing the mayhem," Raymond spoke up. He was on his way to deal with the supposed intruder, though he did not anticipate the young hero to have broken out so easily from his bindings.

"Where's Shannon?" T.K.O. demanded, cracking his knuckles. He longed to tear more Boxmore baddies apart as if this was a birthday present to himself.

"She's getting a simple tune up, Darrell should be finished by now," the sports addicted robot retorted, though felt slightly stressed. The narrow walkway they were on made his abilities' space very limited. K.O. only felt his worry double.

"I'll enjoy tearing you apart," T.K.O. cackled, and threw a dark purple aura knuckle straight at their enemy. Raymond threw himself onto his back to dodge the attack, it hit a wall, blowing a chunk out of it.

"This is the first time I've seen an ape like you have self control," Raymond murmured, unsure if he should be more terrified of that or not. The sports bot fired an explosive baseball at the ceiling above T.K.O., blasting apart several of the support bindings for the walkway. The walking path tilted almost fully, and T.K.O. slipped off the side with a growl of annoyance.

Raymond laughed. That would slow him down for a while longer, he thought. A second later though, the walkway got grabbed by two large aura fists before being torn down violently. The young sort of hero had held onto the bottom side and decided to take the sports loving robot down with him.

Raymond groaned. " _I forgot how bothersome that brat was…_ " It had been quite a long time since they had fought the bad half of K.O. The storage area was now half destroyed, crushed under the fallen walkway. Countless robots and Boxmore products were also smashed.

"I was going to make destroying you quick, but now, I'll take my time," T.K.O. stood across from him. He darted forward, delivering a strong uppercut at Raymond's chest and throwing him to the air. T.K.O. made an aura knuckle appear and wound up a punch. Raymond tried to counter by making a bat appear from his compartment, swinging as he came downward, but the aura knuckle tore right through it, bashing Raymond's face in and sent him flying to another set of boxes, breaking them and their contents to bits.

The young Boxmore bot held his head. "My shock absorbent armor upgrade is useless against that strength," he grunted. All the upgrade did at this point was retain his body's shape. When he regained his bearings, he saw T.K.O. lunging at him with a sinister grin on his toothy face.

Though before he could connect his attack, T.K.O. got blasted out of the air by a strong plasma shot in the side, sending him to the side of a nearby wall, destroying more products along the way.

"You alright, Raymond?" Darrell asked, coming this way. He himself knew just how dangerous T.K.O. was. Boxman had gone into hiding essentially after the last several fights with T.K.O. ended poorly for him.

"Not at all," Raymond got back up, "Where's Shannon?"

"She had to turn her staller off. She'll be here soon," Darrell grinned. Everything was done. Their sister was back to normal to them, though they had no remote way to disable the stallers outside of their dad's office. Shannon was the only one who could stop the hero, so they were forced into this waiting game.

 _"I got a bad feeling about whatever they're whispering to each other…"_ K.O. gulped, not sure why everything felt anxious to him now.

"Just shut up and watch this," T.K.O. cracked his neck. He dug in his feet in and began to charge up his energy into his fists. "Time to try our new trick," he declared. The Boxmore bots got ready, not sure what to anticipate, especially with someone as chaotically unpredictable as T.K.O. " **Knuckle hurricane!** " T.K.O. threw a large aura knuckle in a spiral, and then as many aura fists as he could, all swirling around the central large knuckle like a tornado.

" _ **What the-?!**_ " Darrell gawked. He and Raymond got hit dead on by the attack, with barely any chance to evade. The room was caught up in a rubble explosion. Concrete, wood and metal flew, a storm of dust followed shortly after.

"Maybe I should've held back a bit…" T.K.O. murmured upon seeing the massive hole in the wall with the now crumbling ceiling above them. The young boy felt proud at the sheer strength from the attack, they had made-up the attack weeks ago but never had a reason to use it until now. He saw no trace of Raymond and Darrell after turning them into scrap metal with the attack.

 _"Come on, we have to find Shannon,"_ K.O. insisted to his bad half to get him to focus. He doubted it would be long before the Boxmore bots were reloaded into another set of bodies.

They tried to advance, but before T.K.O. could get far, an all too familiar buzz saw suddenly flew by, barely missing him and cutting part of his hair.

" _What the…_ Shannon?" T.K.O. turned his gaze to his right. There stood a furious looking Shannon.

"Tearing apart daddy's factory like this? That's low for a hero!" Shannon declared, the two people in one stared unable to say a word.

 _"…T.K.O. let me take over,"_ K.O. demanded. His bad twin had become partially distraught. It was obvious from his heavy breathing. They both knew that buzzsaw she threw at them and stance of hers were far from a friendly feigned attack.

"Fine," T.K.O. bitterly agreed, letting K.O. get back in control of their body. Everything about him went back to normal, excluding the hair, since his headband had snapped after the initial transition.

"Shannon, I'm sorry. we were just worried about you," K.O. spoke, feeling bad for trashing her home like this. It wasn't the first time he did either.

"Worried about me? You heroes are annoying! I'm not letting you get off easy after this kind of damage," Shannon retorted sounding confused at first but that quickly devolved into sheer rage, she threw another pair of buzzsaws at him. The young boy bashed them aside, but by the time he did the female robot had closed the distance between them. She decked him in the face, knocking him flat on his back a good few feet. He held his now black eye sorely.

"Shannon! Stop! Don't you remember what we've done together!? _I…_ " K.O. was hit by an exploding baseball from nowhere, sending him through another one of the many crates.

"Sorry for the wait, sister," Raymond apologized. He and Darrell approached, both looking incredibly smug.

"Not your fault daddy accidentally turned on my staller," Shannon shrugged it off. She looked quite happy with how easily she had been beating the youngest bodega worker. Her brothers had lied to her about everything going on after erasing her memory.

K.O.'s heart shattered, and it was painful. He didn't want to believe it, but the truth was made clear to him so quickly. Shannon had forgotten everything she had with him.

He choked out a weak sob. Now what could he do, he asked himself. His brain was in fifty different places, while the Boxmore bots got ready to attack him.

Shannon had to admit that there was not really any enthrallment to the battle. Here they were, barely giving any effort to the fight. K.O. was not fighting back. He was mostly blocking the assault from the trio. Plasma blasts, modified sports weapons and buzzsaws all came at him like a tidal wave.

K.O. fell onto his side after another blow to his chest knocked him away. He was battered, bruised, cut and burnt. His spirit was gone. Nothing he said mattered. However, before the Boxmore siblings could attack him further, he heard Rad and Enid's voices.

" _ **K.O.!**_ " Rad and Enid gasped. They were just in time for the chaos. The two got in front of their injured friend. The Level 4 ninja looked the most shocked about the damage done to K.O. She just knew this was the culmination of that relationship being an evil ploy by Boxman. Rad looked as equally confused as he did angry.

"Didn't think you two'd wake up anytime soon after how me and Darrell beat you," Raymond grinned smugly. The ninja pulled out a grey smoke ball from her pocket. "We didn't come to waste time with you idiots."

"We're getting out of here," Enid ordered her co-workers before throwing the ball on the ground. It burst into a cloud of thick smoke. The three of them vanished as the smoke bomb gave them the chance, not wanting to waste more time on a pointless battle.

"Figures they'd run," Shannon huffed, but looked content and proud to have scared the heroes off. Raymond and Darrell high fived each other. Everything had gone according to plan.

"Come on! Let's go get lunch while the construction bots get to repairing," Darrell asked, clearly drunk on their victory. Their sister nodded, beginning to follow them away to enjoy the celebration. Shannon though still felt like something was wrong. There was an unexplainable sense of guilt in her circuits. But she ignored it, guessing it was just from winning in a three on one.


	19. Broken

**Broken.**

Broken was the only word that could describe what his life felt like, ever since Raymond and Darrell's contemptible hands murdered his relationship with Shannon. For the past two weeks since then, he was broken, beyond repair.

Everyone close to him tried to brighten his spirits, but every attempt to help him pull himself together only worked for one second, until he crumbled again. He stopped going to work after the first three days even, because of the Boxmore attacks which always involved his ex. How could he even face her after what went down anyway?

Carol peeked into her son's room. She could only watch him as he lay face first on his pillow. It tore the former P.O.I.N.T member apart. She knew her baby might wind up with a broken heart. She just didn't expect it to break so hard. What hurt just as much was that there was nothing that she could do to make him feel better.

She heard the news from Rad and Enid the day they brought an inconsolable K.O. home, she wanted to go tear apart Shannon and the rest of Boxmore, however she decided against it. Assaulting someone with no memory of what they did wasn't worth it. Carol walked away, just letting K.O. take his time recovering, after all there was no forcing an emotional wound to heal.

 _ **"How long are you gonna be like this?"**_ T.K.O. asked in his mind. Even he had been trying to get him to get over himself. He felt it would be the ninth time this week.

" _…If you want to take over, you can…_ " K.O. sniffled in response. His bad side could only feel an awkward and unexpected tense atmosphere. Never in their combined lives did he think the Level 3 hero would offer his body willingly, with no trades or restrictions.

 _ **"Why? Just so I can hear you crying in my head instead? No thanks. At least in here I can sort of drown it out,"** _T.K.O. retorted. After a moment though, in reality, he was in no mood to be in control either. They were both hurt, his good side far worse than him.

T.K.O. felt that silence coming back full force. He took in a breath, unable to believe what he was about to say. _ **"You were right."**_

His good side blinked, surprised. He took a second to respond after processing his words. "Shouldn't I be the one saying that…?" K.O. asked. His relationship with Shannon blew up. Even if it wasn't his or Shannon's fault, T.K.O. warned him this would happen. If only he had listened.

 _ **"No. I don't know why, but seeing Shannon not remember who you were… who we were. It hurt for me too,"**_ T.K.O., aggressive as he was by nature, tried to sound reassuring. It was far out of his comfort zone to put it mildly. _**"You were right… I loved her too. It was nice to have someone to hold. Someone to trust,"**_ he sighed. He was not even sure when those feelings developed, but here he was, now in the same position as his twin. The two now had nothing much left to say between them.

* * *

There was a knock at the front door. Carol went and opened it, and she saw Dendy. "Oh hey, Dendy. What brings you over?" the high-Level hero asked. She would have said that K.O. was in no mood to hang out today, however that didn't need to be said with how obvious it truly was. All of his friends knew about his little heart being tattered.

"Greetings, Carol. I came to see if I could try to cheer up K.O.," Dendy explained, "May I see him?"

"I appreciate it, but I don't know if he's up to having visitors…" Carol murmured, unsure, she inevitably gave in, letting the young kappa come inside. The single mother was becoming concerned for her son's rapidly declining mood. If no one could cheer him up, she dreaded to know how worse he'd get.

The highly intelligent kappa arrived at her close friends room shortly after. She felt a tug at her heart strings. Seeing him in such a sad state… she shook it off, trying to remain focused on her initial plan. It may have gone differently than she originally intended, however it still worked out perfectly for her.

"K.O.? Are you awake?" Dendy chirped, watching her friend take a moment to get his emotionally exhausted body to sit up on the edge of his bed.

"Hey Dendy… do you need something?" K.O. greeted her, looking to her, but not in the mood to be near anybody.

"I came to help you," Dendy stated, adjusting the goggles on her face. The Level 3 hero was confused. She seemed joyful. He rarely ever saw her like this. She usually tended to act monotone.

"Thanks, Dendy, but… I don't think there's anything you can do to make me feel better…" K.O. appreciated her offer, but he thought not even her inventions could glue his heart back together.

"Well you won't know the results until you permit me a chance to try right?" the young genius held out a hand to him. "Will you accompany me to the plaza, please?"

K.O. wanted to turn her down and brush her aside. Though he had shut himself in the room for so long, the thought ringing in his head again that he couldn't be like this forever. The only way for things to get back to normal, was to do the stuff he did normally before the disaster.

 _ **"She's acting weird… Something's up,"**_ T.K.O. had to confess in his twins head that he was sharing similar feelings of unease, they saw no reason to not go along with her.

K.O. put his hand in hers, feeling a reassuring squeeze in reply. "Alright, Dendy. I'll come with you," he agreed, much to her delight. The two wasted no time heading for the door.

"Oh! You're going out, peanut?" Carol gasped, surprised. Her son nodded, giving a weak smile - the first time he had smiled in these last two weeks.

"Yeah, mom. I'm going to the plaza with Dendy. I'll be back later," K.O. explained. His mom gave a thumbs up.

"Have fun! And thank you so much, Dendy," Carol chimed, relieved to see her son getting back up on his feet.

"It's no trouble," Dendy responded. The two young heroes left to begin their walk to Lakewood Plaza.

* * *

Everything was pretty normal when they got there. Every store ran as it would at an average day. Every person they passed did casually greet the young boy, and even ask how he was doing, since he had been gone for some time. This did cheer K.O. up a fair bit, although the emptiness his eyes withheld did not diminish.

The two heroes sat at an area where most were idly chatting and enjoying lunch. K.O. was half heartedly licking the ice cream Dendy had gotten them.

"How is your emotional state now, K.O.?" the kappa appeared complacent right now. He had no clue why either, he presumed she was trying to make him happy by being happy herself. A strategy he employed a lot when it came to trying to cheer others up as well.

"A little better than this morning," K.O. admitted. It helped to get out of bed for a change, seeing how many people had missed him while he was absent warmed his heart too.

"Well don't worry. I'll happily assist you through every step of your recovery, no matter what," Dendy smiled. She was continuing to ignore her normally monotone expression, as if being desperate to shove her usual behavior into the back of her head.

"Thanks…" her close friend weakly smiled. Dendy looked determined to help him. He appreciated that.

"Do you wish to accompany me to the bodega? I need to pick up the parts I had ordered," Dendy threw her empty ice cream cone in the nearby trash can. K.O. wanted to refuse. He didn't want his co-workers to see him like this, however he also didn't wish to avoid going to work for months on end either.

"Alright, let's go," K.O threw this finished ice cream away as well before beginning to follow Dendy off. As they left the food court, he suddenly felt her grip his hand. He looked down to see her hand locked with his. " _Dendy…?_ " he asked. He got no reply, but he could tell that she was being sheepish. He simply held hers in trade, accepting the emotional support.

* * *

When they entered Gar's bodega, they could see the place running as usual. K.O. hoped the Boxmore attack for the morning had been dealt with already.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," Dendy claimed. K.O. nodded before she left to get the parts for whatever new project she was working on in mind.

 ** _"She's giving me the creeps,"_** sounded T.K.O within K.O.'s head.

"I see why… Maybe she got really lucky with something," K.O. shrugged, not willing to think too much on the matters. He went to approach the front counter.

"Hey, Enid," K.O. greeted.

" **K.O.?!** " Enid gasped, surprised to see him show up so randomly. " _H-_ hey! It's great to see you," she happily hopped over the counter. "You feeling any better?" she crouched down to his height. She had been trying to wrap her head around the secret relationship he once held, even after the last few weeks she still had trouble believing it at all. It sounded so far-fetched that she kept thinking it was a dream whenever she woke up from a nap.

"A little. Dendy has been trying hard to help me," K.O. stated. His mental state was barely holding together, it was still a little better than a couple weeks ago.

"I'm sorry you had to go through all that… I still can't believe Boxmore had such a plan brewing," Enid let out a frustrated breath, feeling bad for not being more observant. She pulled him into a tight hug.

"Little buddy?" Rad appeared, "Hey! I didn't think you'd be coming back this soon!" the alien had come to ask Enid to join him for their lunch break, he was pleasantly surprised to see their youngest friend.

"Hey, Rad…" K.O. weakly greeted Rad as well. His low energy unsettled them, since they were so used to him being so overly optimistic that it was almost suffocating. "Y'know," K.O. breathed, "I have something that's been on my mind for a couple weeks now that I have to ask you guys."

"Sure. Ask anything, little guy," Radicles insisted.

"What is it, K.O.?" asked Enid.

"How did you find out I was with Shannon…?" K.O. was straightforward with his query. He knew they only found out the very day their relationship was forcefully ended. He had kept everything perfectly secret until the very end.

"Oh… well, Dendy told us," Enid simply answered.

"Wuh…?" K.O. looked confused now.

"She let us listen to some recording of you and Shannon talking," Rad followed up, though when spoken aloud, they did have a quirk in their head appear. How did the young kappa record audio like that for so long by mistake. Was it even an accident, as she claimed?

 _ **"So she was going to try and get them to ruin our relationship instead of the Boxmore bots…"** _T.K.O. growled in his head, unsure who to be madder at now, Jethro or Dendy. K.O. felt his brain shatter when reality struck, that one of his dear friends, no matter what motive, would want to sabotage him like this, even knowing the obvious consequences.

" _I…_ I need to go," K.O. bid his friends goodbye before walking out the door. They didn't get to say anything further before he was gone. It was clear that small improvement to his depression just vanished in under a minute.

"I got a bad feeling all of a sudden, Rad," Enid murmured, standing back up.

"If he needs help, he'll ask for it. All we can do is wait," Radicles stated. They really had no other options beyond being supportive. His co-worker nodded, the two splitting up to get back to work.

* * *

K.O. walked by himself through the outer area of Lakewood plaza. He had become ready to just head home to return to his bed. He stopped at a lone tree, letting out a weak whimper. "I don't even know who I can trust anymore…" K.O. exclaimed. The lone tree did remind him a lot of his and Shannon's first kiss. Dendy's betrayal really tore his heart out.

 _ **"I think she was trying to take us on a date, instead of trying to cheer us up as a friend,"**_ T.K.O. had to admit his suspicion. He felt creeped out knowing the kappa could do all that, but was unable to deny how impressed he was by it too.

"What should we do?" asked K.O., hoping his bad half would have some clarity on the situation. All the good-natured boy wanted to do right now was to go back to bed for another few weeks.

 _ **"Don't ask me. You're the one in control here,"**_ T.K.O. retorted. He had enough issues shoved onto him. Even so, he felt equally as awful as his practical twin. Their conversation was cut short when a familiar backfire noise hit their ears.

" _Jethro?_ " K.O. turned around, seeing the robot rolling to them from nearby.

 **"I am Jethro,"** he beeped. Having been hiding nearby for some reason, as if he had been looking for the young hero.


	20. Restoration

An aura fist was suddenly thrown at him full force. Jethro barely moved in time before it could hit him. The impact took a large chunk off the concrete ground.

"I am Jethro," the Boxmore bot looked at K.O. That usual cute face was contrasted by red hot anger, like it had just crawled out of hiding from his once empty shell, just by seeing one of Boxman's robot children. K.O. was getting blinded by that very rage. Somebody had to pay for his failed relationship.

 _ **"Wow… I've never seen you this mad,"**_ T.K.O. had to comment in a rather proud manner. This waltz between the two kept on for quite a while. K.O. attempted to pulverize Jethro in one devastating blow, only for the robot to dodge it. His speed seemed to have been upgraded. The ground suffered more and more damage as the chase dragged on.

* * *

After several minutes of this, K.O. was panting, his limit reached from his anger exhausting him. He slumped onto one knee, looking ready to pass out. He panted, realizing his stamina had drastically lowered due to the heavy depression these last few weeks. He hadn't really eaten, trained or went out for even a second, and it all caught up to him.

"I am Jethro," Jethro queried. If the Level 3 hero was done trying to turn him into spare nuts and bolts, he wanted to have a word with him.

"What do you want?" K.O. asked, his eyes icily gazing at the robot.

"I am Jethro," the robot stated that he had been looking for the young hero for the last week. He had to wait for his brothers to drop their guard after the initial disaster a few weeks ago.

 _ **"Can we tear him in half now?"** _T.K.O. asked in his twin's head.

" _Shush,_ " K.O. hissed, continuing to listen. T.K.O. groaned and shrugged that off. They already listened to this far, so why bother stopping him now.

"I am Jethro," beeped the robot.

K.O.'s eyes instantly snapped his head up to stare at Jethro in disbelief. " _Wh…_ What do you mean?" He asked. Those words sounded too good to be true.

"I am Jethro," gladly repeated the robot. K.O. took a seat on the ground, rummaging around in his pocket for a moment and pulling out that small USB stick that Jethro had given him weeks ago while he was bound in ropes.

"I can get Shannon's memory back with this…?" K.O. gasped. There was hope. He understood now that the blue robot wanted to help him, now understanding the plan all along.

"I am Jethro," Jethro spent the time gladly explaining what K.O. needed to do to get Shannon back to her old self. As he did, K.O at long last had that joy back.

K.O scooped him into a hug. "Thank you, Jethro! I owe you so much!" He joyfully exclaimed. He dropped him back on the ground before darting off without any warning.

"I am Jethro," Jethro sighed, stuck on his side. He'd have to roll himself back onto his treads alone.

* * *

It didn't take long for K.O. to return to the bodega, but before he could go in, he found Dendy standing outside. She seemed relieved to see him again.

"There you are, K.O. I was worried something had happened," the smart kappa greeted him. She feared that a Boxmore attack was happening again, and that K.O. would be forced to flee to stop the already stitched emotional wound from being ruptured.

"Oh. _Uh…_ " K.O. found himself pausing awkwardly, trying his best to withhold that anger from the discovery that his co-workers found out he was with Shannon.

 _ **"Just be straight forward about it. We don't have time to waste here,"**_ T.K.O. told his twin. K.O. had to agree there. He'd rather not waste any more time here either.

"I'm sorry, Dendy, but I need to talk to Rad and Enid," K.O. walked past his friend. The kappa felt her instincts kick in. Instead of thinking, she grabbed his wrist, stopping him.

"I thought we were going to spend time together today," Dendy reminded him, though tried her best not to use the word date, aware that it was too early into the plan to do that.

"Sorry, Dendy, I have something really important to do. I need to talk with you later about something just as important too," the Level 3 hero explained. He did feel upset around her right now, almost angry. But he was doing his best to ignore it for now. Dendy took a second but gave in, letting him go watching as he hurried off into the bodega.

"I feel there is another miscalculation in my plan…" the young genius murmured. All she could do now was hope that it was the exact opposite of what she was worrying. Dendy began to walk away, though curious about what K.O. wanted to talk to her about.

* * *

Enid and Rad were simply having their lunch back in the break room. They were merely watching the usual news report from Dynamite's action news. "I've seen worse ways to get a cat out of a tree," the ninja joked about the report.

" ** _Rad! Enid!_** " they suddenly heard K.O. as he door burst open, surprising them both.

"Whoa!" Rad gawked, scared to his feet, "Little buddy, what's going on?"

"K.O.?" Enid chirped, surprised to see him, though more surprised how he appeared like his old self, even if it was only slightly.

"Guys, I need your help!" said K.O.

* * *

K.O. explained everything to them, having to even tell them about how Jethro aided him from beginning to end on this matter, but now the blue robot could do no more for him. "…And that's what I need help with."

Enid stared in disbelief. There was no way that any of the Boxmore bots would go this far to help him. Rad contemplated it as well.

"Well? Will you two please help me?" the Level 3 hero begged in reply to the silence. He had done so much for not just them, but everybody in the plaza. Surely they would help him back when he most needed them.

" _I'm…_ Sorry, K.O., but I think this is a bad idea," Enid spoke up first. She still firmly believed his relationship with Shannon was nothing more than a horrendous plan on Boxman's part. She hated to refuse his request, since his heart was already in enough pieces. Crushing that little hope he held was just as hurtful to her, however she expected this to happen anyway if they did go through with it.

K.O. was in disbelief. " _But…_ why?! It's Shannon we're talking about!"

"Yeah, and I get why you kept it all secret," replied Enid, "I mean, did you forget that she's a villain? You're a hero. Even if this does work out between you two, what all can you do together?"

"That doesn't matter!" K.O. cried, upset, "I'm practically part-villain myself with T.K.O. in my head! You haven't seen Shannon like I have. She's a lot nicer and sweeter than you think."

"You aren't part-villain at all, K.O. You can control T.K.O.," Enid retorted. T.K.O. broke her and Rad's bones a couple times, though in their books he was deep down a strong, albeit anger prone hero. "Rad," she turned to the alien, "Can you talk some sense into him? You went through the same thing, didn't ya?"

"Rad…?" K.O. sniffled. He was unaware of the dampness on his cheeks. Enid's words brought out more of a reaction from his emotions than he had been aware of. He wiped his eyes, unsure if the tears were from having his only hope brushed aside or knowing that they might not help him

" _Well…_ " Rad breathed in, it was strange to see the alien acting more mature in his behavior. "I mean… Yeah, I'll help."

"You can't be serious," Enid held her head in disbelief, wondering if this decision was stemming from his own experience at having his heart broken due to Shannon's siblings as well.

"I know you think I'm stupid, Enid, the truth is… Shannon went out of her way to apologize to me. I could tell they actually love each other, just from how they talk about one another," Rad explained what their co-worker hadn't been around for. Anyone, he figured, could see how happy they were together… even if it was K.O. with his ex, as awkward as it was to him. "Besides… Nobody deserves to have their memories erased, even if they are a villain, right?"

Enid looked between the two boys, taking his words into consideration.

"…Alright," she sighed, reluctantly. "What do we need to do?"

K.O. immediately pulled them both into a spine snapping hug. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"Can't breathe!" Rad gasped.

" _My shurikens are digging into my side,_ " coughed Enid.

* * *

At Boxmore Headquarters, things were operating at max performance. Raymond and Darrell had gotten their sister back, and they felt pretty overzealous. They had reset her memory and had added some modifications to make her mood feel far brighter. Everything worked out perfectly.

"You feel alright today, Shannon?" Raymond asked.

"Yeah. I'm fine Raymond, thanks," Shannon reassured. She was simply sharpening her buzzsaws. It had been a weird few weeks to her. Something felt off and having both of her brothers practically waiting on her for seemingly everything was strange. However, she found no problem. They could be trying to make amends, so she simply accepted it.

Suddenly, she, Raymond and Darrell heard the sound of an all too familiar emergency alert. One that they each could activate at their whim to call for help or aid in any situation.

"It's Jethro's distress signal," Shannon stood up. Only now did it occur to them they had not seen their tiny brother since last night. After another moment, they finished receiving the full message of the alert.

"He's been kidnapped by the Bodega losers?" Raymond could not believe his speakers. Shannon felt déjà vu from this for some reason.

"Those jerks are playing dirtier than usual! Let's get them!" Darrell declared. The last two weeks had been more or less a lot easier for them in the battles, since Gar's bodega was down a hero. They couldn't be any happier about it either. The trio of robotic villains hurried off to deploy to battle.

* * *

It did not take long for them to get launched in their usual crate to the plaza, crashing in and cracking the parking lot ground. The box's sides bust off. They were greeted by the usual duo of Enid and Rad. For the last couple of weeks they had faced each other without K.O. around.

"Two on three as always, eh, Lakewood Losers?" Darrell sneered. As if he had anything to be proud about. The bodega workers looked particularly bitter today. They had fended off the attacks as usual. It was a lot tougher on their own though.

"What are you doing taking our brother?" Raymond demanded, finding it rather underhanded for supposed heroes.

"We're trying to just blow off some steam today ourselves," Enid twirled a kunai on her finger.

"Yeah!" Rad gave a cocky grin, finding their clear frustration bemusing to them, "We needed a new trash can anyhow. We'll give him back if you fight us... Unless you guys are scared!"

The Boxmore bots were all uncertain. The heroes looked oddly prepared to make some noise. Something had transpired that made this far beyond eerie. But it was something they had no real care for when their brother was in danger.

"Fine! If you idiots wanna fight, then let's go!" Shannon cackled, the two small groups charged at each other to clash once more.

The fight began at its usual fashion. Enid was fighting against Shannon and Darrell, while Raymond attacked Rad. The overwhelming numbers issue for one hero was a handful for them.

"What happened to that steam you had to get off? So far I'm just seeing weak kicks!" Shannon threw a buzzsaw. Enid kicked it away. Darrell followed up quickly with a large plasma blast. The Level 4 ninja threw herself onto her back to dodge the blast that turned a nearby car into metal slag.

"Might've pushed their buttons a little too much…" the ninja mumbled, hopping onto her feet. In one swift motion, she pulled several shuriken out from both pockets.

Darrell felt the sharp stars slash parts of him. Shannon tried to put up her guard, but the buzzsaws wound up not being able to stand the brunt of the attack. One was snapped off, while the other quickly became brittle and dull. Enid had been purposefully aiming for them and finally hit her target.

"Ow! That's dirty fighting!" the orange Boxmore bot complained.

"Speaking from experience there?" Enid dodged another blast from Darrell. Shannon ran up and punched her in the chest, making her stumble back. Enid growled out her annoyance. They had to keep this up until the right moment showed itself.

Rad dodged left to right as Raymond threw every hockey puck that he had at him. A deep nerve was struck with their particular behavior today.

"For a sports bot, you sure can't aim too well!" Radicles taunted, blasting another hockey puck.

"Oh really? Fine then! I'll give you our combo!" Raymond growled, motioning to Darrel for his assistance. The sports addicted robot made an explosive baseball pop out of his hand, and he wound up the pitch. "Take this!" Raymond threw with his full force. Darrell followed up by firing a strong plasma blast behind it that engulfed the baseball.

Rad grinned. Just as he had waited for. He swiftly dodged to the side. The fire-engulfed ball zoomed past him. He then fired one of his beams at it, catching the attack. He swung it toward his coworker.

"Enid!" Rad called out. The purple haired ninja dodged to the side. Her foot lit ablaze, and she kicked the redirected attack like a soccer ball.

"Shannon! Look out!" Raymond called out. Shannon could only brace herself upon realizing the attack got redirected at her. The overpowered explosive baseball blasted right beneath her feet, sending her flying high into the sky, screaming.

"Shannon!" Darrell gulped, knowing they were going to get torn apart later for that one.

"Well, our part's over. Now we can quit messing around," Enid grinned to Rad.

"Let's do it," Radicles readied to give the Boxmore bots a real battle.

* * *

Shannon landed a good ways away, in another part of the plaza entirely. Her body was partially damaged, having gained a good few scrapes dents and scratches.

"Those two are more trouble than they ever will be worth," she grumbled, holding her sore back.

"I am Jethro," Jethro's voice caught her attention, as did his engine's backfire.

"Jethro?" Shannon stood up, glad to see their brother idling nearby. She wondered if he had escaped the heroes' containment, though that didn't explain the distress signal nor the reason behind it then.

"I'm just glad you're alright," she crouched down to hug her brother. Jethro appreciated the embrace, even if he could not return it himself.

"I am Jethro," he beeped.

"Huh? What do you have to be sorry f _-for-?!_ " Shannon stuttered in a sudden halt as her eyes forcibly closed. She fell onto her knees, releasing her brother from her embrace as she stayed half limp.

" _D…_ Did I do it right?" K.O. nervously questioned. The USB stick was now prominently sticking out from the back of her neck, it was where he had been ordered to stick it.

"I am Jethro," Jethro assured the plan had gone off with little hitch. They were reusing the same strategy Shannon had requested from her ex when wanting to talk to Rad privately to separate her from Raymond and Darrell, albeit a bit rougher.

The two waited with bated breath. K.O. looked extremely anxious. Jethro kept that same straight face. A minute passed, and then the USB stick popped out from the opening it was inserted into, the USB clattering on the ground as the slot it initially had been plugged into closed. Shannon's eyes began to open as she regained consciousness.

" _Sh..._ Shannon?" K.O. chirped, breaking the tense silence, watching as the orange robot got her bearings. It only took another moment for his voice to register.

"K.O.?" she gasped, "What happened to you?! You look horrible!" she gripped his hands in a reassuring yet worried manner. K.O. did not answer with words. He hugged her tight, burying his face into her shoulder, tears running down his cheeks.

"I am Jethro," Jethro commented, getting her attention. With each passing minute, Shannon's memories were getting restored, like they hadn't been forcibly erased in the first place. It was then that she began to recall the last time she saw her boyfriend weeks ago, she felt terrible for all of it, even if it was her brothers fault and not her own.

"I'm so sorry, K.O. I didn't… I had no control of it," Shannon whispered. She thought she had put him through this personal hell for the last few weeks, and heavens above she felt terrible for it.

"I-it wasn't your fault, Shannon. I know it wasn't," K.O. stifled another sob, reluctantly ending the embrace. she leaned down to kiss him, to give him that comfort he so badly missed.

"I am Jethro," Jethro commented sounding relieved to know his plan had been successful. He had that memory backup made before revealing the truth of the relationship to their family.

"You're a lot smarter than I thought you could be, Jethro," Shannon confessed. The little blue bot always had an unpredictable side to him. that just added onto his surprising resourcefulness.

"Thank you, Jethro… Really," the Level 3 hero said, as he and Shannon embraced again.

"I am Jethro," he insisted it was nothing. However, they all knew the other two Boxmore bots were a problem amongst them that they didn't wish to address during such a happy occasion.

"Jethro's right… Your brothers are going to keep messing with you until we give up…" K.O. solemnly spoke. Shannon could tell he was trying to keep what little strength he had up, but K.O. was near shattering again. Suddenly, an idea ran down her motherboard.

"Don't you worry, K.O. I have a plan on how to handle them both," Shannon reassured her significant other while she continued hugging him. K.O. was unsure what she had in mind he nodded though willing to do anything if it meant not losing his girlfriend again their embrace ended shortly afterwards. "I'll come back later once we finish," Shannon hummed.

"I am Jethro," Jethro nodded, beginning to roll away, following his sister. K.O. felt a renewed hope inside himself.

"I better go make sure Rad and Enid didn't get hurt," he snapped out of his love-induced train of thought and went on his way.

* * *

When he returned to the bodega, he saw Rad and Enid recovering from the aftermath of the fight. Darrel and Raymond had been torn to scrap metal once again.

"K.O.!" Enid noticed him, as did Rad, "Over here!" she waved him over, they were glad to see that familiar happy expression on his face, it made them confident that things had worked out.

"How'd it go, little buddy?" Rad eagerly queried. He had a fair share of bruises, but it was nothing unusual to them.

"Shannon got her memory back. She's back to normal," K.O. took a seat between his co-workers and best friends, he looked better than he had in the last few weeks by leagues already.

"That's great, K.O.!" Rad cheered. The level 4 ninja still looked indecisive on how to feel about K.O. and Shannon's romance rerolling, but she felt relieved to see him seemingly breaking out of that depression.

"So what happens to you two now?" Enid questioned, seeing him look outwards to the damaged parking lot. As if it was some weird metaphor for the events of this month.

"I don't know… Shannon and Jethro said they had some plan though," K.O. stated. He stayed seated, just enjoying the afternoon sunset with his friends. He had to wait for Shannon to come back after doing whatever plan she had in mind.

 _ **"I still gotta talk to Dendy too..."**_


	21. Continuing Anew

Raymond groaned. Normally, reloading into a new body felt refreshing, what with every last ding, scratch and mark being undone. Instead of this time, he felt pretty awful, like someone had repaired him with scrap parts.

" **Raymond!** Get up!" Darrell's shrill voice called out to him. Raymond reluctantly opened his eyes to see his brother strapped to a table with chains so severe that it'd make an insane asylum look like a luxury vacation.

" _Wuh?_ " Raymond realized the situation he was also in. Neither of them could move, and their weaponry did not work as their stallers had been activated.

"I am Jethro," Jethro's voice caught their attention. They saw him nearby, who had waited for them to wake up.

"Jethro? Hey! Help us out here!" Darrell called to him.

"I am Jethro," Jethro flatly replied.

"Alright, everything should be ready!" Shannon's voice rang out. She entered the room with joy, each step she took was full of glee as she took a seat between the two. That smile terrified them for an unknown reason.

"Shannon? What's going on? Is father angry?" Raymond requested an explanation. This situation was growing to be far more daunting.

"Nope. If I told daddy, then we'd all be in trouble… and I'm only after you two right now," Shannon stared to the nearby computer monitor for a brief moment before turning her attention back to them, while starting to hook up several wires to her brothers.

"What are you mad about? I-if it's about blowing you up, then we're really sorry!" Darrell was worried. Their sister would be angry about being blown up like that during their fight earlier, but he did not think she would become this angry.

"No," Shannon growled, "I'm mad that you guys messed with my head and tried destroying my relationship! _**Again!**_ "

" _ **What?!**_ How do you remember?!" Darrell gasped, shutting his mouth tight the second he realized that confessing their guilt was a far worse mistake.

"I am Jethro," Jethro chimed, sounding rather smug about undoing their evil scheme.

"You're shrewder than I anticipated, Jethro," Raymond commented. It was not hard for him to put the pieces together and figure out what was going on now.

"Well, since you two nearly destroyed my second relationship, I'm giving you the same treatment you gave me, with a little extra to it," she deviously grinned, those sharp teeth showing. Payback was going to be sweet, she didn't hate her brothers just their behavior, either way it did not stop her from enjoying every moment of this. "Well, I'd tell you more, but…" she turned to them, flashing instead a content innocent smile. "Once I'm done, you won't remember any of this and then some," she finished, ignoring her brothers protests of shouting. Her life should be more bearable after this, thanks to Jethro and his brilliant addition to the idea. "Alright, Jethro. Let's do this!"

* * *

K.O. sat in a more secluded spot of the plaza, an abandoned parking lot that supply trucks usually stopped at.

" _I just hope this goes well,_ " he murmured, looking a lot better already, as if the energy he lost in his depression was coming back with each passing minute.

 ** _"Not like there's a good way to go about this…"_** T.K.O. reminded his good side. Both of them were equally dreading this daunting task before them, despite the fact only one had to do any real talking.

"Apologies for the wait, K.O.," Dendy's unusually chipper voice caught his attention. The kappa approached, happy to see him looking so much better already. She believed it was a great sign of her plan working well beyond her expectations.

"It's alright, Dendy," the Level 3 hero replied, slightly worried on how to handle this. He stood up from his place on the ground where he had been waiting for her.

"What is it you wished to discuss with me?" The genius kappa smiled, feeling her heart race in glee at the possibilities here, she tried her best to hide a majority of said enthusiasm. K.O. felt somehow sickened by how proud she behaved after all she knowingly done.

"…Why'd you tell Enid and Rad about me being with Shannon?" K.O. asked, point blank. Utter silence fell. Even the wind seemed to stop. Dendy's joyful expression was gone in half a second.

" _Wh…_ Whatever could you possibly be referring to, K.O.?" Dendy played dumb, trying to hide the cold sweat beading from her forehead. She saw the upset look on his face, the expression alone clearly telling her that he indeed found out about her tricks.

"Rad and Enid said you had a recording of me talking with Shannon… But you never talked with me about it." He stated, no response. Just awkward silence. "Please answer me, Dendy," he pleaded as the air became tenser. He wanted to at least remain friends with her, he could not do that if he was the only one speaking. After what felt like an eternity, she looked to his face.

"Yes, K.O. I recorded you two on what I presume was the night you had her join your family for dinner," Dendy confessed, though she did not specify how she did it, not wanting to make things worse for herself given the corner she was now metaphorically backed into. It was something she overlooked. She did not expect K.O. to ask his co-workers about it, since it would have tore open his emotional scars.

"Why did you tell them, Dendy? You didn't even come to talk to me," K.O. felt betrayed, given all the two of them had gone through.

"I was doing it for your own good. There is no long-lasting relationship between a hero and a villain, let alone an organic person being is far past incompatible with a nonorganic automaton," Dendy gave her defense, and she saw the severely hurt look on his face.

"If there's one thing T.K.O. and you taught me, any hero can still act like a villain," K.O. countered. She felt the sting of that retort.

 _ **"I can hear you, y'know,"** _T.K.O. butted in, he was ignored by his good half, making the anger prone boy huff. Though T.K.O. had to internally confess that he was not the one to lead this conversation, it was a rough enough nightmare as is. Being near someone he lost all feelings for himself made it only more awkward.

"K.O, I'm sorry. _Just…_ I've developed a special bond with you during our long time together. I hoped you felt similar… I don't know what came over me when I first discovered you had a girlfriend," Dendy tried to continue, but saw his gaze drifting to the ground.

"I'm sorry, Dendy. I can't accept it," K.O. paused. He was going to cause emotional stress on her with his words, and considering how awful he felt these last two weeks, he was reluctant to make someone feel nearly as bad as he had. He hated to be selfish, but he was at the center of this still unraveling disaster. This seemed to be the only way out of it.

"I can't love you, especially knowing you can do all that without even talking to me or thinking about how I felt. I can't love someone who can hurt another with no care. T.K.O. told me about you having feelings for me, but all this just…" he breathed, doing his best to keep his composure, " _I-_ I can't. Any feelings I had for you don't exist anymore, Dendy. I'd be happy to still be your friend, if you still want to be."

K.O. could not look at her face at first, his gaze wandering off again during his miniature speech. When the silence became unbearably tense, he focused his eyes on her.

" _I-I… see…_ " Dendy sniffled. That once straight face was in shambles. K.O. could see the tears escaping her eyes, her goggles doing nothing to really slow them down. He did not need to hear her apologies. He already knew by her reaction that she was deeply regretful.

K.O. remained silent, not wanting to hurt her further. The genius kappa quietly sobbed. He began to walk past her, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder to let her know he would hold no grudge. It was not something he could bring himself to do, especially to a close friend. He left the area, leaving Dendy alone in her sorrows. Having her actions put into a more bluntly worded perspective opened her eyes quite harshly.

" _Wh-what have I-I done…? I ruined everything…_ " Dendy whimpered to herself quietly. She fell to her knees, unable to stop the waterfall of tears. She wanted to chase him to beg him to give her a fair chance, but her body refused to move, as if it knew that the pleas would be a futile effort.

* * *

K.O. now sat in the break room of the bodega with Enid. He had become quite exhausted, both physically and emotionally, yet still felt golden compared to a couple weeks ago.

"Sorry you've been through so much lately, K.O.," Enid apologized back. She felt bad that he did not come to them sooner for help. She had bitter reminders of Elodie through him.

"It's not you or Rad's fault… I'm sorry I didn't tell you about dating Shannon though," K.O. replied, feeling like things could have been a lot better if he had told them sooner about his date's identity, the risk of it also becoming far worse was what made him hesitant.

"I understand why you didn't tell us. Just remember you can come to us if you need help, okay?" the Level 4 ninja reassured, rubbing her short friend's head, messing up his hair slightly.

"I will, Enid," he hugged her in return. They then heard a knock on the open door.

"Hey, guys, Shannon's here," Rad informed them. They had been more or less waiting for the young robot to return, mainly hoping the plan she had fabricated with Jethro had worked. The stockroom worker let Shannon step inside before following.

Enid felt rather uncomfortable. It was three heroes in one room with someone they had considered a long time rival for what felt like years now.

"Did it work, Shannon?" K.O. sat beside his girlfriend. Enid was in the other seat across from them, while Rad leaned on the nearby wall.

"It went perfectly," Shannon nodded, "Raymond and Darrell shouldn't be a problem anymore."

K.O. was overjoyed. They could continue dating again. He replied by wrapping his arms around her neck, his vocal chords being paralyzed by the joy. She gladly returned the warm embrace to her boyfriend.

"Really? I can't see them backing off that easily…" Rad murmured, finding that rather hard to believe, given how persistent the Boxmore bots were notorious for being.

"How'd you do it?" Enid quirked an eyebrow, doubting it was as simple as threatening nor begging her brothers into behaving well. They couldn't imagine informing Boxman of any of this either without an explosion of trouble.

" _It…_ might sound worse than it actually is," she sheepishly chirped, aware how evil it would come off as.

"What do you mean?" K.O. asked. Shannon felt awkward to be in the same presence of various heroes that she had slashed up her fair share of times, and they were being kind to her.

"I reprogrammed part of their memory circuits, and Jethro made a special program to keep things clear, after we removed all of their memories of the last month and replaced them," Shannon explained.

"Isn't that kind of a short fix?" Rad questioned, trying his best to keep up, but it was like listening to Dendy talk, half the words went over his head.

"That's where Jethro's addition comes in," Shannon grinned deviously, her sharp teeth showing.

K.O. got anxious whenever he saw that expression. "What'd he do?"

"If they ever hear anything about us being together, no matter how, their memories of the last forty-eight hours get overwritten and replaced," she answered. There was no chance for any memories of her brothers knowing of them dating to be resurfaced. She and Jethro knew how to install said feature into all of Darrell and Raymond's models, she left it up to Jethro to do that part in a fashion that would not alert Boxman.

"Well… can't say they didn't have it coming," Enid awkwardly coughed, still not very comfortable with the two dating. She doubted she ever would be.

"I'm sorry I caused you so much trouble, Shannon," K.O. mused, "I didn't mean to make your life harder."

"My life would be a lot harder without you, K.O.," Shannon then planted a kiss on his lips without warning. The young hero gladly returned the kiss. How he missed feeling her these last few weeks.

" _Wow, they uh… really aren't shy, huh?_ " Enid whispered to her other co-worker.

"I'm just scared to imagine how Carol'll take this when she finds out," Rad quietly reminded her. Their young friend's mother had strength that no one, not even Mr. Gar, could laugh at. They were oblivious to the fact she already knew.

When the liplock ended, K.O. kept Shannon's hand in his, feeling renewed. The wounds in his heart were now essentially a figment of his imagination. The two looked to each other's eyes, Shannon giving a steadfast smile, and K.O. a goofy smile.

"So…" Shannon hummed, "What happens to us now?"

K.O.'s smile widened. "I have no clue!"

 _ **The End...**_

* * *

 **Authors Note: Hey all, I just wanted to say thank you for sticking with this story as long as you did. I hope it was at least decent for my first fanfiction, I'd love to hear your thoughts and criticism for it. I'm sorry if it was bad, I enjoyed making it a lot.**


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